Lila De Nobili. Theatre Dance Cinema
by Vittoria Crespi Morbio.
Essay by Vittoria Crespi Morbio, The Heart’s Intermittences; Correspondence; Testimonials; Chronology of the productions.
Collection «December Seventh».
Amici della Scala – Grafiche Step Editrice, Parma, 2014
Italian and English edition, pp. 192.
Famous for her reserve, Lila De Nobili (1916-2002) became a legend in spite of herself.
Her name is inseparable from the scenography of several performances that went down in history, above all the famous Traviata at La Scala in 1955 with Maria Callas, Carlo Maria Giulini and Luchino Visconti, changing forever the way of conceiving opera.
Born in a privileged world Lila De Nobili was an instant success after the Second World War, when she became the role model set and costume designer for Jean Cocteau, Raymond Rouleau, Peter Hall, Frederick Ashton, Tony Richardson, Franco Zeffirelli, Gian Carlo Menotti, in addition to Visconti himself.
She worked with Édith Piaf and Audrey Hepburn, Margot Fonteyn and Ingrid Bergman.
She was not yet sixty when she left it all behind, started all over to study painting, and withdrew in a bohemian loft under the rooftops of Paris.
Her nuanced, atmospheric brushstroke, swift and perfected with infinite glazing, enchanted generations of artists including Robert Wilson and David Hockney, who did her portrait.
The thousands of figures, faces and gestures that throng her stage work, but also the notebooks where she drew up to the very last, compose an immeasurably, stunningly rich comédie humaine.