PIER FRANCESCO MAESTRINI – stage director
Born in Firenze, Italian opera director Pier Francesco Maestrini started his career in 1993, at Tokyo’s Bunkamura Orchard Hall, with Rossini’s masterpiece Il Barbiere di Siviglia. By then, he staged over 100 Opera productions in Italy and around the world, from baroque repertoire to Italian verismo.
In 2016, Maestrini opened Cagliari’s opera season with La Campana Sommersa, (The Sunken Bell) a masterpieceby Respighi practically forgotten during last century, claiming immediate success and generating large interest around the opera world with excellent reviews, receiving the cover of l’Opera Magazine.
In 2015 he worked twice in Verona for two acclaimed productions: La Forza del Destino in December and Il Barbiere di Siviglia in April, improving the interaction among cartoons and real characters in a surprising show that will be revived in New York at the NYCOpera Renaissance next year. Also in 2015, he staged a new production of Elisir d’amore in Beijing at the magnificent National Centre of Performing Arts, where he previously performed Don Pasquale in October 2014 and Il Barbiere di Siviglia in 2013.
In 2014 he was in Cagliari Turandot, with the sets inspired on the artwork of the worldwide acclaimed sculptor Pinuccio Sciola. The Teatro Lirico achieved the highest number of viewers in its entire history.
In 2013, his work had great recognition in São Paulo (Brasil) with two acclaimed productions: Cavalleria Rusticana/Jupira and Don Giovanni. The first was strongly inspired by Coppola’s Godfather, and the second was a revival from the production staged in 2012 in Santiago (Cile). 2013 also featured two production of Aida: open air at La Perla Festival, on Pfäffikon’s lake near Zurich (Switzerland) and in Maribor at the Slovene National Theatre. And in the same year, Otello, in Modena where expert opera fans and qualified reviewer acclaimed the production.
In 2012 Maestrini premiered his vampire version of Don Giovanni having a huge impact on Chilean audience, where stunning sets and costumes matched the strong concept behind the unusual but logical parallel between two eternal myths: Mozart’s libertine and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In the same year, his Rigoletto in Rio de Janeiro delivered a desperate portrayal of Verdi’s hunchbacked. In June 2012, his Elisir d’amore in Maribor was a huge success entertaining a surprised audience with an unexpected Countrywestern version of Donizetti’s masterpiece, that was considered one of the best operas staged in the Slovenian National Theatre.