The life story of theatre set designer Uberto Bertacca (Viareggio, 1936 - Kélibia, 2020) is a story of work and creativity, passion and intuition, artisanship and imagination. A 40-year long career which intersected with all the main threads of Italian theatre: prose, opera and musical comedy, with forays into cinema, television, and even at the Sanremo Festival, in Italy and abroad, in France, Spain, Holland and Germany.

He created visionary, innovative set designs, which have been highly influencial and in many cases have made history (as did the unforgettable designs of Orlando Furioso in 1969). Bertacca worked with numerous acclaimed directors, from Luca Ronconi, to Giancarlo Sepe, from Garinei and Giovannini to Peter Del Monte, from Giuseppe Patroni Griffi to Attilio Corsini and Mauro Bolognini, just to name a few. In the last years of his life Bertacca, a reserved and free-willed man, who always shied away from the limelight, decided to live his old age far away from the public scene, in a small Tunisian city. Here the light, the sea, the wind and the simplicity of the people’s life created a new set for him. The artist who created the magic of scenic reality with mirrors, black boxes and utopian layouts, looked once again in the mirror, searching for a renewed sense of life.

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The event is part of the Italian Capitals of Creativity in the World project, that in the 2025 edition awarded Turkey. The series of events, which brings Italian creativity in all its nuances to the three main Turkish cities, is organized in Istanbul under the auspices of the Italian Embassy and with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Directorate-General for Country Promotion. The event is also part of the programme for the Made in Italy Day in April 2025.
This journey through the symbolic places of Uberto Bertacca's life and work is a homage to the Italian art of scenography and Italian creativity.
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