‹ Collection ‘Gli artisti dello spettacolo alla Scala’ ›
Wakhevitch at LaScala
by Vittoria Crespi Morbio
Essay by Vittoria Crespi Morbio, Un talento nomade /
A Nomadic Talent.
Appendices: biographical notice; catalogue of the works; chronology of stage designs by Fabio Cassarà.
Collection «Performing Artists at La Scala».
Amici della Scala – Umberto Allemandi & C., Turin 2005.
Italian edition, pp.123.
Odessa 1907–Paris 1984: the two dates framing the life of Georges Wakhevitch identify a career typical of that crowd of émigrés fleeing the Russian revolution and investing the West with dreams and fantastic inventions, from Diaghilev to Erté. A most talented painter, Wakhevitch signed his first performance as scenographer before he was eighteen. He never stopped: five hundred designs for the stage and a hundred and forty films form an impressive catalogue in scale and intrinsic quality. Many world or Italian premieres at La Scala were signed by Wakhevitch, from the Console by Menotti (1951) to the Dialoghi delle carmelitane by Poulenc (1957).