Richard Hudson was born in Zimbabwe and educated in Zimbabwe and England. In 1988 he won a Laurence Olivier Award for designing a season of seven plays at the Old Vic Theatre, London. His set designs for The Lion King have won numerous awards, including a Tony® in 1998. He is a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI). In 2003 he won the Gold Medal for Set Design at the Prague Quadriennale, and in 2005 he was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Surrey. He has designed sets and costumes for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, the Young Vic and the Gate, London. In opera he has worked at the Royal Opera, English National Opera, La Scala Milan, Metropolitan Opera New York, Opera National de Paris, Lyric Opera Chicago, Staatsoper Vienna, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and in Zurich, Munich, Amsterdam, Venice, Florence, Turin, Bregenz, Houston and Washington.

 

Production Title: Un Ballo in Maschera

 

Role: Set and costume designer

 

Production response

To accommodate Covid-19 restrictions, at short notice we sliced the enormous built cyclorama horizontally in half. The top half was raised one and a half metres and the chorus of 80, each separated by a Perspex screen, sat looking and singing over the bottom portion. The sound was amazing, and the drama heightened by their voyeuristic and forceful interjections, directed at the protagonists below.

Tragically, the original director, my most frequent collaborator for nearly 40 years, died of complications due to Covid, just a month before rehearsals began. R.I.P. Graham Vick

 

Year: September 2021

Location/Venue: Teatro Regio di Parma, Italy

 

Credits

Company: Verdi Festival

Composer: Giuseppe Verdi

Conductor: Roberto Abbado

Director: Jacopo Spirei

Lighting: Giuseppe Di Iorio

Choreography: Virginia Spallarossa

Photographer: Richard Hudson