Paolo Fantin

Born in Castelfranco Veneto, he specialised in Set Design and Scenotechnics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. He works for opera and prose. In 2004, he began working with Damiano Michieletto for Britten's Il piccolo spazzacamino. At the ROF in Pesaro, he was set designer for La gazza ladra (2008 Abbiati Prize for direction). He created the sets for Il cappello di paglia di Firenze, Jackie O, Das Land des Lächelns, Lucia di Lammermoor, Roméo et Juliette, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Luisa Miller, Il Corsaro, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Madama Butterfly, L'elisir d'amore, Così fan tutte, The Greek Passion. Other productions include: Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte at La Fenice in Venice, La bohème in Salzburg, Il Trittico at the Theater an der Wien, L'elisir d'amore in Madrid, Poliuto in Zurich. In 2011 he won the Abbiati Prize for the sets of Madama Butterfly (Turin), Sigismondo (ROF) and Don Giovanni (Venice). He then signed the sets for Médée, Un ballo in maschera and Salome at La Scala, Alcina and Falstaff in Salzburg, Idomeneo, Rossini Otello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream t the Theater an der Wien, The Rake's Progress in Leipzig and Venice, La Cenerentola in Salzburg and Paris TCE, Guillaume Tell, Carmen and Cavalleria rusticana/Pagliacci in London (Olivier Award), Il viaggio a Reims and Rigoletto in Amsterdam, Die Zauberflöte and Macbeth in Venice, Cendrillon at the Komische Oper Berlin, Die Lustige Witwe in Venice, Rome and Buenos Aires, Don Pasquale and Samson et Dalila in Paris, La donna del lago in Pesaro, La damnation de Faust (Abbiati Prize best production 2018) in Rome, Jenůfa at the Berlin Staatsoper, Béatrice et Bénédict in Lyon, Kat'a Kabanova in Glyndebourne, Der Rosenkavalier in Vilnius and Bruxelles, Giulio Cesare in Egitto in Paris TCE and Rome, Les Contes d’Hoffmann in Sydney, Venice and London, Don Quichotte at Opéra national de Paris, Orfeo ed Euridice in Spoleto; in addition to the new compositions Aquagranda and Le Baruffe in Venice, the world premiere of Animal Farm at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam and then in Wien and in Helsinki and Il nome della rosa at La Scala. He won the 2017 International Opera Award as best set designer. He created the sets for Damiano Michieletto's two film projects: Rigoletto presented at the Rome Film Festival and Gianni Schicchi presented at the Turin Film Festival, both broadcast by RAI.

He is also a guest artist at the Pavilion “Venezia” for the Venice Biennale 2022. In 2025 he has been awarded with an International Opera Award as Best Designer. He was also Production Designer at the Opening Ceremony of the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter.

Among his recent and future works: Messiah at the Komische Oper, La fille du régiment at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Die Verlobung Im Kloster at the MusikTheater an der Wien, Il nome della rosa at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Lohengrin and West Side Story at Teatro dell’Opera in Rome and La traviata for Bregenzer Festspiele.

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