Mirco Michelon

Mirco Michelon is a theatre and opera director, lighting designer, assistant director, essayist, and lecturer, with forays into cinema. He holds the rank of Full Professor of Theatre and Opera Direction at the Academy of Fine Arts "P. Vannucci" in Perugia. His training crosses several disciplines. After musical studies (violin and piano) at the "A. Bonporti" Conservatory in Trento, he graduated in Direction, Set and Costume Design from DAMS (University of Bologna, 2006), with a thesis on the direction, sets, and costumes in Luchino Visconti's theatre, opera, and film work; he went on to a specialist degree in Direction, Set, Costume, and Lighting Design from IUAV Venice (2009), proposing a new staging of Franco Mannino's opera Il diavolo in giardino. He furthered his training through the Te.Sp.I course at the "G. Verdi" Conservatory in Turin (2010–2012), before completing a PhD in Italian Studies at Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis (2020), with a dissertation on the theatrical poetics of Edoardo Sanguineti, and a second-level diploma in Musical Theatre Direction at the "L. Refice" Conservatory in Frosinone, staging Puccini's Turandot (2024).

As a director, his output spans spoken theatre, opera, film, operetta, and musical theatre. Notable work in spoken theatre includes productions of texts by Edoardo Sanguineti, William Shakespeare, Carlo Goldoni, Euripides, Dacia Maraini, Bertolt Brecht, and Alberto Savinio, as well as dramaturgies drawn from Ignazio Silone and Maria Eisenstein, among others. In musical theatre, his repertoire includes Franco Mannino's Il diavolo in giardino, Bellini's Norma, Verdi's Rigoletto and Il Trovatore, Ravel's L'Enfant et les sortilèges, Mozart's Don Giovanni and Bastien und Bastienne, Hindemith's Hin und zurück, Puccini's Turandot and Suor Angelica, Monteverdi's Il ballo delle ingrate, and Haydn's L'isola disabitata, among many others — alongside works by Rossini, Luca Lombardi, Schoenberg, Debussy, Stravinsky, Bizet, Offenbach, Donizetti, and others. In cinema, he has developed projects at the intersection of filmic and theatrical language, with particular attention to Italian and European auteur film. He has worked as assistant director alongside leading figures of the Italian and international theatre scene, including Luca Ronconi, Antonio Salines, Giuseppe Dipasquale, Stefania Porrino, Roberto Recchia, Francesco Bellotto, Alberto Jona, and Paolo Ciaffi Ricagno, and as assistant lighting designer to Guido Levi and Claudio Coloretti. He has further honed his craft working alongside directors such as Walter Le Moli, Claudio Longhi, and Stefano Vizioli, and with actors including Sonia Bergamasco, Massimo Popolizio, Luigi Lo Cascio, Milena Mancini, Giuseppe Pambieri, Luca Zingaretti, Alberto Onofrietti, Lino Guanciale, and others. His academic activity also includes teaching Composition of Stage Direction at the STM – School of Theatre Musical (Milan-Novara, 2021–2023), and he currently serves on the AFAM doctoral boards of the Academy "P. Vannucci" in Perugia and the "G. Briccialdi" Conservatory in Terni. He is Head of the Cinema and Audiovisual Course at the Academy of Fine Arts in Perugia, where he fosters synergies between film language, the visual arts, and music theatre through innovative teaching projects and interdisciplinary collaborations.

As an essayist, he has published extensively on theatre, music, cinema, and literature in edited volumes and specialist journals — with publishers including LIM (Libreria Musicale Italiana), ETS, Franco Cesati, and LogisMa — focusing on the relationships between literary text, music, cinematic image, and staging. His research engages authors and figures such as Edoardo Sanguineti, Dante, Bertolt Brecht, William Shakespeare, Giuseppe Verdi, Hector Berlioz, Guido Gozzano, Ignazio Silone, Dino Buzzati, Ugo Betti, Alberto Savinio, Luchino Visconti, Liliana Cavani, and David Lynch, among others, exploring the boundaries between artistic languages across opera, theatre history, auteur cinema, theatrical-musical-cinematic direction, Italian and foreign dramaturgy, and lighting design, among other fields. He is currently engaged in projects related to Franco Mannino, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and other authors deserving rediscovery, reflecting his ongoing commitment to expanding the performed repertoire beyond the standard canon. An internationally active speaker, he has been hosted by institutions including Université Paris 8, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, the University of Warsaw, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Craiova, the University for Foreigners of Perugia, the University of Malta and others, and has collaborated with venues such as the Salone del Libro in Turin and Umbria Libri — establishing his reputation as a director and researcher at the intersection of theatre, music, cinema, and the visual arts.