Stefanos Lazaridis
Encyclopedia
Stefanos Lazaridis was a stage designer, best known for his work in opera. Originally intended for a business career, he studied stage design in London, and was quickly in demand in theatres and opera houses, working with John Copley
John Copley
John Michael Harold Copley is a British theatre and opera producer.He was born in Birmingham, West Midlands, son of Ernest Harold Copley and Lilian Forbes, and attended King Edward VI Five Ways. After a brief career as an actor, he became stage manager at Sadler's Wells in 1953 and resident...

 and other directors.

Originally his style was lavish and naturalistic, but he changed to a less traditional style, working with David Pountney
David Pountney
David Pountney is a British theatre and opera director and librettist internationally known for his productions of rarely performed operas and new productions of classic works...

 and other more avant garde directors at English National Opera
English National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...

 and elsewhere.

He occasionally directed operas, and was for a short time director of the Greek National Opera
Greek National Opera
The Greek National Opera is the country's state lyric opera company, located at 59 Akadimias Street in centralAthens. It is a public corporation under the supervision of the Greek Ministry of Culture and administered by the Board of Trustees and its Artistic Director.The organization is responsible...

.

Life and career

Lazaridis was born in Dire Dawa
Dire Dawa
Dire Dawa is one of two chartered cities in Ethiopia . This chartered city is divided administratively into two woredas, the city proper and the non-urban woreda of Gurgura....

, Ethiopia, son of a prosperous expatriate Greek businessman, Nicholas Lazaridis. He was educated at the Greek School in Addis Ababa and the Ecole Internationale in Geneva. In 1962 he went to London to take a course in business administration, but instead enrolled at the Byam Shaw School of Art in Kensington and later at transferred to the Central School of Speech and Drama where he studied theatre design. His fellow Greek, the designer Nicholas Georgiadis
Nicholas Georgiadis
Nicholas Georgiadis CBE was a painter, stage and costume designer, renowned for his work in ballet, particularly in collaboration with Kenneth MacMillan.- Early life :...

, took him on as an apprentice, and he designed his first theatre production in Guildford in 1967, Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...

's Eccentricities of a Nightingale. He attracted attention for his designs for Antony Tudor
Antony Tudor
Antony Tudor was an English ballet choreographer, teacher and dancer.-Biography:Tudor, born William Cook, discovered dance accidentally. He began dancing professionally with Marie Rambert in 1928, becoming general assistant for her Ballet Club the next year...

's "Knight Errant" for the Royal Ballet's touring company in 1968, and was invited to design a new production of Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...

for the director John Copley
John Copley
John Michael Harold Copley is a British theatre and opera producer.He was born in Birmingham, West Midlands, son of Ernest Harold Copley and Lilian Forbes, and attended King Edward VI Five Ways. After a brief career as an actor, he became stage manager at Sadler's Wells in 1953 and resident...

 at Sadler's Wells Opera
English National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...

 in 1970.

Lazaridis's early designs were naturalistic and lavish, and suited Copley's approach to production. They worked together both at English National Opera
English National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...

 (ENO) (The Seraglio
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Die Entführung aus dem Serail is an opera Singspiel in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The German libretto is by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner with adaptations by Gottlieb Stephanie...

, 1971, Il trovatore
Il trovatore
Il trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...

, 1972) and Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...

 (Le nozze di Figaro, 1971, Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...

, 1973). In the 1980s, Lazaridis worked a great deal with David Pountney
David Pountney
David Pountney is a British theatre and opera director and librettist internationally known for his productions of rarely performed operas and new productions of classic works...

 at ENO. His design style moved away from opulent naturalism, and embraced Pountney's non-naturalistic approach. Pountney later wrote,

Lazaridis designed more than 30 productions for ENO. Pountney rated among the best of them Rusalka
Rusalka
In Slavic mythology, a rusalka was a female ghost, water nymph, succubus, or mermaid-like demon that dwelled in a waterway....

, Hansel and Gretel, Dr Faustus
Doktor Faust
Doktor Faust is an opera by Ferruccio Busoni with a German libretto by the composer himself, based on the myth of Faust. Busoni worked on the opera, which he intended as his masterpiece, between 1916 and 1924, but it was still incomplete at the time of his death. His pupil Philipp Jarnach finished it...

and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (opera)
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is an opera in four acts by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Op.29. The libretto was written by Alexander Preis and the composer, and is based on the story Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov. The opera is sometimes referred to informally as Lady Macbeth...

, the last of them set in a meat-packing factory. Other directors with whom Lazaridis worked were Nicholas Hytner
Nicholas Hytner
Sir Nicholas Robert Hytner is an English film and theatre producer and director. He has been the artistic director of London's National Theatre since 2003.-Biography:...

, Patrick Garland
Patrick Garland
thumb|right|200pxPatrick Garland is a British actor, writer, and director.Garland started Poetry International in 1963 with Ted Hughes and Charles Osborne. He was a director and producer for the BBC's Music and Arts Department , and worked on its Monitor series...

, Colin Graham
Colin Graham
Colin Graham, OBE was a British-born stage director of opera, theater, and television.Graham was educated at Northaw School , Stowe School and RADA...

, Tim Albery
Tim Albery
Tim Bronson Reginald Albery is an English stage director, best known for his productions of opera.-Life and career:Albery was born in Harpenden, the son of the impresario Donald Albery and grandson of the producer Sir Bronson Albery...

 and Phyllida Lloyd
Phyllida Lloyd
Phyllida Lloyd CBE is an English director, best known for her work in theatre and as the director of the most financially successful British film ever released, Mamma Mia!.-Career:...

. Not all his productions were well received. The Times described his set for an ENO Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...

as "one of the ugliest and drabbest ever devised for Tosca." Together with the director Steven Pimlott
Steven Pimlott
Steven Charles Pimlott OBE was an English opera and theatre director and actor. An obituary in The Times hailed him as "one of the most versatile and inventive theatre directors of his generation"...

, Lazaridis presented a 1989 Carmen in the vast Earls Court
Earls Court Exhibition Centre
The Earls Court Exhibition Centre is an exhibition centre, conference and event venue located in west London, United Kingdom in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea . It is the largest exhibition venue in central London. It is served by two underground stations, Earl's Court and West...

 arena in London, which The Times considered "a new benchmark in the intelligent popularisation of opera.".

With Pountney, Lazaridis worked on three lake-stage productions for the Bregenz Festival, Der fliegender Holländer
The Flying Dutchman (opera)
Der fliegende Holländer is an opera, with music and libretto by Richard Wagner.Wagner claimed in his 1870 autobiography Mein Leben that he had been inspired to write "The Flying Dutchman" following a stormy sea crossing he made from Riga to London in July and August 1839, but in his 1843...

(1989), Nabucco
Nabucco
Nabucco is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, based on the Biblical story and the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornue...

(1991) and Fidelio
Fidelio
Fidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...

(1995). Pountney called Lazaridis's designs for these productions "astonishing … The opportunity to work on this scale somehow triggered Stefan's most sensitive dramaturgical instincts, allied to his phenomenal aesthetic sense and understanding of scale."

Away from opera, Lazaridis designed productions of a wide range of plays from a show about the Mitford sisters
Mitford family
The Mitford family is a minor aristocratic English family that traces its origins in Northumberland back to the time of the Norman conquest. In the Middle Ages they had been Border Reivers based in Redesdale. The main family line had seats at Mitford Castle, Mitford Old Manor House and from 1828...

 to Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...

 dramas and Shakespeare comedy. In 1993 he directed and designed the Duran Duran
Duran Duran
Duran Duran are an English band, formed in Birmingham in 1978. They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and a leading band in the MTV-driven "Second British Invasion" of the United States...

 tour of the U.S.

Among Lazaridis's later designs for the opera house was the Covent Garden Ring
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...

cycle (2004–06) directed by Keith Warner, of which The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

wrote, "Warner and Lazaridis can't decide if the Ring is heroic myth, political allegory, or human story. Instead, they cram the stage with a vast range of imagery, from the uninspired video art which depicts Siegfried's journey on the Rhine, to the surrealist kitsch of the Gibichung Hall and the dark naturalism of the hunt scene."

Between 2006 and 2007 Lazaridis was artistic director and general manager of the Greek National Opera
Greek National Opera
The Greek National Opera is the country's state lyric opera company, located at 59 Akadimias Street in centralAthens. It is a public corporation under the supervision of the Greek Ministry of Culture and administered by the Board of Trustees and its Artistic Director.The organization is responsible...

; he found himself frustrated in his attempts to vitalise the company, and resigned. Pountney observed, "the Greeks have themselves to blame that they squandered such an astounding talent."

Lazaridis died of cancer at the age of 67. He was survived by Tim Williams, his partner of 47 years.
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