SET & COSTUME DESIGN

“(…) With vivid colours, simply constructions and atmosphere-creating lighting, Gilberto Giardini's imaginative sets immerse performers and audience in a magical circus world. They form a picturesque backdrop for his splendid, lively, and witty costumes, which are as if tailored to the characters. (…)

(...)Staging Verdi's grand opera for the opera festival on the green hill between Bad Endorf and Halfing is a gigantic undertaking. The work is about megalomania, impotence, fear of God, blinding, and freedom. Director Nicola Panzer decided to present the complicated story of the Babylonian regent Nabucco as a timeless, large-scale opera of movement on the broad Immlingen stage, on which the individual falls by the wayside in the face of mass society. The Italian-Polish set and costume designer Gilberto Giardini created an oversized sandstone-coloured wall that dominates the back wall of the stage. It symbolises power, imprisonment, craving for recognition, and loneliness. Clear colours define his costumes in red, gold, grey and black, which appear both martial and timeless, and latex materials predominate for the protagonists. The white cotton robes of the Hebrews with blue corsages were obviously inspired by the Israeli national flag.
(...) A visit to the opera in the green is worthwhile!

" (…) several square meters of empty stage .  Through use of illusionistic light and color, the scene is more immaterial than realistic.   It consists of a few monochrome-midnight blue room-dividers, very few stage props  - here two rococo swings in Fragonard style, there a colourful flower wreath , or a bowl with  bunches of grapes plus the precise use of slide-projection and silhouettes: Everything is strict, stylised and transparent. The set and costume designer Gilberto Giardini understands the high art of saying more with less and aesthetic calculation. (possibly even money-saving)
With traces of Robert Wilson, he creates in the magic light (sound) a space to place his noble costumes. (…)"

Standing ovations from the packed house at the end of a truly gripping premiere evening. (...)
This story, based on a play by Victor Hugo, even moved the Oscar winner, Hollywood film producer and Bremerhaven resident Volker Engel: “I found it absolutely grandiose - it blew me away“ (...). Grandiose the open, to the opulence, the light and the music giving space, big pictures of the designer Gilberto Giardini; a huge renaissance frame, from which a decadent court society in red-golden silk brocade literally spills out, the shadow of a threatening death bird on the horizon, a lotter bed full of maitresses, under it the court jester‘s domestic Biedermeier souterrain (...)

“This Offenbach operetta premiered on a technically simple, but very diverse and charming stage set (Gilberto Giardini).  The costumes – grotesquely imaginative in conception – were also designed by Giardini. The doltish and dumb was deliciously captured. .”

“Kammeroper in Japan - Success for Johann Strauß' "Fledermaus”.
“Successful start for Johann Strauss' "Fledermaus" in the production of the Vienna Chamber Opera in Japan: The opening of the tour in Sagamihara was celebrated on Saturday with long-lasting applause and bravos for the ensemble. Not only were the musical and vocal performances vigorously acclaimed, but the direction by Thomas Mittmann in the set design by Gilberto Giardini was also very enthusiastically received by the Japanese audience. (…) “