Romeo Castellucci


Romeo Castellucci is an Italian theatre director, playwright, artist and designer. Since the 1980s he has been one part of the European theatrical avant-garde.

Biography

Romeo Castellucci graduated with a degree in painting and stage design from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna. In 1981, jointly with Claudia Castellucci and Chiara Guidi, he founded Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio.
Since then he has produced numerous plays as an author, director and a designer of sets, lighting, sound and costumes. His works, which combine multiple arts to achieve a holistic effect, have been presented in more than 50 countries. Castellucci’s dramatic lines challenge the primacy of literature. His theatre is a visual, complex art rich in vision. He has developed a language that is comprehensible in the same way as music, sculpture, painting and architecture can be.
Since 2006, Castellucci has been working individually. His productions are regularly invited to the world’s most prestigious theatres, opera houses and festivals.
Romeo Castellucci has released more than a dozen books and has received numerous awards and recognitions, amongst which:
In 2003 he became director of the theatre section of the 37th edition of the Venice Biennale, and in 2008 he was one of two "associate artists" at the Festival d'Avignon, and created three pieces inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy.
On 2 August 2013, he was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Biennale with the following motivation: 'For his ability to create a new theatrical language that blends theatre, music and the plastic arts. For creating worlds in which the excellence of the representation of dreamlike states is achieved, which is perhaps the most beautiful affirmation that can be made of theatre. For staging a representation of something impossible to represent, such as a nightmare."
His work is still regularly invited and produced by the most prestigious prose theatres, opera houses and international festivals in over fifty countries covering all continents.
For the three-year period 2021-2024, he is artist-in-residence as ‘Grand Invité’ of Triennale Milano.
In the field of opera, in the two-year period 2023-2024, he will work on Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen for La Monnaie in Brussels and the Liceu Theatre in Barcelona.
In March 2024, he created Bérénice, a monologue loosely based on Jean Racine, with Isabelle Huppert.
In 2025, he made his debut at the Venice Biennale with I mangiatori di patate, a performance staged on the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio, and in Geneva with a version of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, performed by Barbara Hannigan and Jacub Josef Orlinski.
In 2026, he will appear for the first time at La Scala in Milan with Pelléas et Mélisande.

Stage works

  • Cenno
  • Diade incontro a monade
  • Persia-Mondo
  • Popolo Zuppo
  • I fuoriclasse della bontà
  • Oratoria n.1: Rimpatriata Artistica
  • Oratoria n.2. Raptus
  • Oratoria n.3: Interferon
  • Kaputt necropolis
  • Glory glory, alleluja
  • Santa Sofia. Teatro Khmer
  • Oratoria n.4: Tohu Wa Bohu
  • I Miserabili
  • Oratoria n.5: Sono consapevole dell’odio che tu nutri per me
  • Alla bellezza tanto antica
  • Il gran reame dell’adolescenza
  • La discesa di Inanna
  • Gilgamesh
  • Iside e Osiride
  • Ahura Mazda
  • Amleto. La veemente esteriorità della morte di un mollusco
  • Le favole di Esopo
  • Masoch. I trionfi del teatro come potenza passiva, colpa e sconfitta
  • Hansel e Gretel
  • Lucifero. Quanto più una parola è vecchia tanto più va a fondo
  • Oratoria n.6: con evidenza per coloro che intendono
  • Persona
  • Festa plebea con Oratoria n.7: anche il peggiore può parlare, ma non deve farlo per me
  • Le fatiche di Ercole
  • Orestea
  • Buchettino
  • Pelle d'asino
  • Giulio Cesare
  • Ophelia
  • La prova di un altro mondo
  • Genesi. From the Museum of Sleep
  • Voyage au bout de la nuit
  • Il Combattimento dai Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi, Libro VIII
  • Tragedia Endogonidia
  • Crescite
  • Cryonic Chants
  • Hey Girl!
  • Divina Commedia: ''Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso
  • Storia contemporanea dell'Africa. Vol. III
  • Io penso
  • Sul concetto di volto nel figlio di Dio
  • Parsifal
  • Il velo nero di pastore
  • Persona
  • Attore, il tuo nome non è esatto
  • The Phenomenon Called I
  • The Four Seasons Restaurant
  • DAMMERUNG e NOTHUNG
  • Folk
  • Hyperion. Letters of a Terrorist
  • Schwanengesang D744 - Canto del Cigno
  • Natura e origine della mente
  • Orphee et Eurydice
  • The Rite of Spring
  • Neither
  • Ödipus der Tyrann de Friedrich Hölderlin, d’après Sophocle
  • Moses and Aron
  • St. Matthew Passion
  • Democracy in America
  • Tannhäuser
  • Salome
  • The Magic Flute
  • Il Primo Omicidio Requiem Don Giovanni Bros Bluebeard's Castle by Béla Bartók Resurrection De Temporum Fine Comoedia by Carl Orff
  • domani
  • Daphne by Richard Strauss
  • Senza Titolo
  • Ma.
  • De Walküre by Richard Wagner
  • Bérénice
  • Le Lacrime di Eros
  • Stabat Mater by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
  • ''I mangiatori di patate''

Discography