From 12 June to 16 August 2026, the rooms of Villa Badoèr in Fratta Polesine will host “Fare Scena”, an installation produced by Fondazione Aida that pays homage to the art of Paolino Libralato and invites visitors to enter the heart of his work. A tribute to one of the most important Italian set-realizer scenographers, the protagonist of a career that led him to collaborate with internationally prestigious institutions – from La Scala di Milano to the Metropolitan in New York, through to the Opéra de Paris – alongside directors and set designers such as Bob Wilson, Beni Montresor and Jérôme Savary. Over more than forty years of career, Libralato has succeeded in combining artisanal mastery with contemporary creativity, restoring to scenography the role of “theatre of wonder”. The exhibition itinerary accompanies the visitor on an immersive journey through sketches, photographs, backdrops, and workshop materials, offering a privileged view of what happens behind the scenes – where the magic of the stage takes shape, each time anew. It is from here that this conversation begins.
Portrait of Paolino Libralato, courtesy of the artist
Simone Azzoni: Could you define your role in the construction of a production — in other words, who is the set-realizer scenographer?
Paolino Libralato: The set-realizer scenographer is a complex figure within the work of the stage, in the system that sets productions in motion and gives them form. He is the one who takes on a project signed by the sketch scenographer, who hands over the sketch with all the necessary technical information, and translates it into reality: through construction, sculpture, or painting. In my case, I chose to dedicate myself exclusively to scene painting, precisely in order to seek a different dialogue from the one I had begun to build when I was a student. The set-realizer scenographer must know how to attune himself deeply to whoever entrusts him with new projects, and it is never the same people.
Paolino Libralato, “Cenerentola”, Opera Nazionale di Parigi, 1996, courtesy of the artist
Yours is an art that aligns heart, mind, hand. It requires precision, but also control and soul so that the gesture is not a mechanical enlargement or copy of the original.
When a new production begins I receive a project. The idea, naturally, is not mine, so I need the necessary time to fall in love with the project, beautiful or ugly as it may be. A slow-cooking time is required, a slow fire. The mind begins to look, observe, try, test. Obviously at the beginning one makes samples, these must be assessed, if they work one sets off. But there is still no attunement with the sketch – that comes with the daily work, gradually as it unfolds, one begins to have more intimate, deeper information. It is a thrill that arrives sooner or later, better if in the very first days, so that time is saved and one also feels the effort less. When I am entrusted with the realization of a set, I do not always set off with a running start, immediately understanding the project. I remember that, when I was a student, I felt the need to take time to “warm up my hand”, or the palette: to enter into what I was about to do, to absorb its movements, to truly understand them. Each time it is a matter of new visions, and it is by no means automatic that picking up the brush is enough to immediately find the right brushstroke or a fluid colorism. It does not work like that. Time is needed – which may be days – to fall deeply in love with what one is constructing, with the restitution that is taking shape. It is a process similar to learning a sport: after doing the exercises, the following day something already responds better. With scene painting the same happens. When you return to work in the morning, compared to the evening before, something has settled: the mind has assimilated, the body has registered. And then the arm moves in harmony with the thought, naturally. The effort almost dissolves, because the gesture finds a language that coincides perfectly with what you imagine. At that point, the hand follows the thought with precision, as if it already knew where to go.
Paolino Libralato, “La Cenerentola”, Opera De Rennes, 2018, courtesy of the artist
You often cite authors from the history of modern art, at times you copy them. What does copying mean to you? It is certainly not a mechanical act.
In my time the word “copying” was not even pronounced at school. It had been entirely evicted from the everyday lexicon of school practice. And yet I felt a strong attraction in looking at photographic reproductions in books. So I began to copy, with an almost pedantic obstinacy, above all Canaletto, because I perceived him as close to my poetics. I could not explain to myself the reason for that attraction, but it was there, very strong. And then that attraction became something inevitable. In the art of scenography, the act of copying becomes essential. It is so because, when I am entrusted with a sketch to realize, I must copy it. And if I have not had a training ground of observation – immersed in oils, paints, paintings, including ancient ones – I am missing precisely that dynamic that is needed: the same one that is activated in copying, in looking, in rummaging inside a sketch. And these sketches can contain entire worlds, including historical ones: those of Canaletto, Tiepolo, Mantegna, De Kooning, Pollock. If this training is not practiced with a certain continuity, one loses that capacity for deep, almost microscopic observation that then allows one to dilate and realize another’s idea. And it is fundamental. It is a gesture that may seem cunning, even humble, because apparently you produce nothing of your own. In reality, it is precisely this knowledge that allows me to give form to the ideas of others.
Paolino Libralato, “La dama delle camelie”, New National Theatre Tokyo, 2007, courtesy of the artist
What is the difference, from your point of view, between a craftsman and an artist?
Leonardo da Vinci said: “when the hands do not collaborate with the soul it is not art”. I must say that I fully agree. Dividing craftsmanship from an artistic gesture, in our case, is complex: we are talking in any case about applied arts, and I myself find it difficult to identify a clear dividing line, a precise nuance. However, I have undertaken a clear path, and I have also claimed it: I want to be identified as a craftsman. Because ours is, first of all, a craft gesture. It is born from another’s idea, and we realize it, bring it to light, make it grow, enlarge it. And yet, in doing this, I noticed – over the years, in my youth, in frequenting the various workshops I went to collaborate with – that this gesture was often somewhat trivialized with a “yes yes, come on, it’s fine like that”. And I said that was not right because I wanted to go beyond the simple enlargement and thus avoid a mere machine “dismissing us”. If we cannot give an extra mark, something that goes beyond the pure doing, we lose the meaning of what we do. It is like the high C, like a great kiss, like a pas de deux between two dancers: it is always a gesture of our body and our mind. For this reason I find it difficult to separate these two dimensions, between craftsmanship and art.
Paolino Libralato, “Pessoa. Since I’ have been me”, Teatro della Pergola Firenze, 2024, courtesy of the artist
What is the destiny and future of artisanal scenography?
In recent years I see these machines blossoming ever more which are, in fact, devouring us. They are devouring us because – I was speaking of it just yesterday with a sculptor friend -today there is 3D, and so she was saying: “I no longer exist, they have switched me off”. They can do in two days a job that takes her at least a month, running. And this gap has become an abyss. And yet, just as the high C remains, just as great dancing or the great actor remain, so too does great painting remain. People continue to go to the museum, they want to see the ancient surfaces, to find themselves in those distant flavors. For this reason I chose to stay there: to give back life, strength, courage. There is also a sense of eternity in this painterly gesture that is scene painting, so disregarded and somewhat neglected in recent times. And yet I see that the gaze of the public, when it rests on a painting, on a painted scene, reacts: there is a thrill, a sweetness, a joy of spirit that is beyond price. It is not looking at a printed poster. It is looking, and at the same time listening to, a complete performance: from the heart to the eyes.
Paolino Libralato, “La Cecchina”, Teatro Petruzzelli Bari, 2025, courtesy of the artist
What would you like a student to learn from you?
A student, with me, could learn a great deal. In my time I was always told that one had to be humble. And I, that word, did not understand at all. I only came to understand it with time: it does not mean being submissive, nor having a masochistic attitude. Absolutely not. This is a most noble work. The student must learn: it is a training ground, even a demanding one if you like, but capable of opening magnificent prairies, even from a professional point of view. A deep attention to the past is needed, an almost unbridled love for what has been. Because the projects entrusted to us – beyond titles like Turandot or Tosca – follow forms, stylistic features, and languages that belong in any case to the past. Our great mine is precisely there: in the historical knowledge that Italy has inherited and continues to inherit. Looking to the past is fundamental, doing so with humility in order to then progress, move forward, give new stimulus and new vitality to this painterly gesture. Students must immerse themselves in the study of ancient painting. Not all of it, that would be an enormity, but at least the period that calls to them most. Even if, to tell the truth, one cannot truly objectify an era either: Baroque, Rococo, Renaissance… these are labels that help up to a point. What counts is learning to observe. And, allow me to say, also to use a word today little frequented and almost disregarded: to copy. Copying means putting yourself to the test. Because then, when a backdrop arrives to be realized, perhaps drawn from Tiepolo, what do you do? You go and study Tiepolo. Studying the artists of the past serves to dialogue with whoever entrusts their dream to you. And if your hands are devoid of this knowledge, this attention, this passion for the history of art, if they remain in the mediocrity of improvisation, then one does not go very far. The machine will never succeed in replacing what we do, never. Unless one decides that spectacle becomes something else: a parallel, precisely. But it remains a parallel, something made with machines. And this must be known beforehand, when one enters the theatre: one must know what one is going to see, what one chooses. Even in artistic directorships these are cultural choices. What do we want to do? A Turandot constructed in a certain way, or giving form to a knowledge that is also, deeply, artisanal? This is the crossroads that awaits those who, in the future, will have to direct these magic boxes that are theatres, in Italy and beyond.
Info:
Making the scene. A Tribute to Maestro Paolino Libralato, set-realizer scenographer
12/06/2026 – 16/08/2026
A project by Fondazione Aida ETS ICC
Curated by Simone Azzoni
Villa Badoèr
Via Giovanni Tasso, 3 – Fratta Polesine (Rovigo)
He is an art critic and professor of Contemporary Art History at IUSVE. He also teaches Critical Image Reading at the Palladio Institute of Design in Verona and Contemporary Art at the Master of Publishing at the University of Verona. He has curated several contemporary art exhibitions in unconventional places. He is the artistic director of the Grenze Photography Festival. He is a theater critic for national magazines and newspapers. He organizes research and experimentation theatrical events. Among the recent publications Frame – Videoarte e dintorni for the University Library, Lo Sguardo della Gallina for Lazy Dog Editions and for Mimemsis Smagliature in 2018 and 2021 for the same publishing house, Theater and photography.
NO COMMENT