WINSTON-SALEM – Franco Colavecchia, a faculty member in the School of Design and Production at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA), has been chosen to receive the Distinguished Achievement Award in Scene Design from the U.S. Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT).
 
The award is given “to honor an individual who has established a career record of achievement in his or her specialty,” according to USITT President Carl Lefko.
 
The USITT Distinguished Achievement Awards are reviewed by the institute’s Awards Committee and then approved by the institute’s board of directors. Colavecchia’s award will be presented at USITT’s 49th Annual Conference & Stage Expo in Cincinnati, Ohio, March 18-21, 2009. USITT is the association of design, production, and technology professionals in the performing arts and entertainment industry.
 
“Franco Colavecchia has had a long and  successful career as a designer and educator,” said UNCSA School of Design and Production Dean Joseph P. Tilford. “As a master teacher and artist, he shares his experiences and knowledge with our students every day. And our faculty love him. He is a wonderful colleague.
 
“This award from USITT is going to a very deserving artist,” Tilford concluded.

Colavecchia has been a member of the UNCSA School of Design and Production set and costume design faculty since 1996. Previously, he served as head of scenic design at DePaul University, director of design and production at Opera Company of Philadelphia, and was resident designer and faculty member for 25 years at The Juilliard School. He also has taught at Harvard, State University of New York-Purchase, Carnegie Mellon, Colgate, and University of California-San Diego.
 
Colavecchia has designed more than 100 opera productions for companies including New York City Opera; Lyric Opera, Chicago; Houston Opera; Los Angeles Opera; Music Academy at Lobero; Opera Santa Barbara; Den Norske Oper, Oslo; Monte Carlo Opera House; Wolf Trap, Washington, D.C.; Glimmerglass Opera; Brooklyn Academy of Music; San Antonio Festival; Juilliard; Michigan Opera; and Pacific Opera, Canada. He has also designed productions on and off-Broadway and in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland as well as for PBS-TV: Carmen, “Live From Lincoln Center” and “La Boheme, Great Performances,” for which he was honored by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
 
Colavecchia has also been honored by Artists in the Theatre, British Arts Council and Royal Society for Arts and Industry, United Kingdom. He studied both stage design and painting at St. Martin’s College of Art, London, and the Slade School of Art, London University.

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is the first state-supported, residential school of its kind in the nation. Established as the North Carolina School of the Arts by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963, UNCSA opened in Winston-Salem (“The City of the Arts”) in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system in 1972. More than 1,100 students from middle school through graduate school train for careers in the arts in five professional schools: Dance, Design and Production (including a Visual Arts Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music. UNCSA is the state’s only public arts conservatory, dedicated entirely to the professional training of talented students in the performing, visual and moving image arts. UNCSA is located at 1533 S. Main St., Winston-Salem. For more information, visit www.uncsa.edu.

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