Luciano Damiani (14 July 1923 – 20 June 2007)[1] was an Italian stage and costume designer, who worked both for theatre and opera productions.
In 1978 at La Scala Damiani designed the sets for Ronconi's production of Verdi's Don Carlo, conducted by Claudio Abbado.
Star Peter O'Toole, who portrayed both Miguel de Cervantes and his literary creation Don Quixote in the film, was only one of several who reportedly criticized Damiani's sets as being "too depressing"; however, the creators of the original stage production intended the physical look of it to be rather plain, as they specified in articles written for the original souvenir program of the show, so the drabness of the film's sets may have been quite intentional.
Howard Bay's single set for the original stage production, suggesting the interior of a dungeon, consisted of a plain four leaf clover-shaped stonelike slab tilted toward the audience, with a huge drawbridge-like staircase to allow prisoners to enter and exit.
Every other scenic element was only imagined or vaguely suggested, as in an improvised play (audiences never actually saw the windmill that Don Quixote tilts at, and a single mattress with a cushion served as a bed).
However, according to associate producer Saul Chaplin, it was not Hiller who was responsible for the final physical look of the film, but the previous directors hired to work on it.
A production of Verdi's Macbeth with Damiani's set designs is available on DVD,[3] as is the film version of Man of La Mancha, and the 1968 Cavalleria Rusticana.