André Diot

André Diot (born 1935) is a cinematographer and lighting designer of French theatre and film, who played an important role in the emergence of the profession in France. In a long career, he designed the lighting for the 1976 Bayreuth Jahrhundertring, staged by Patrice Chéreau, the opening and closing ceremony of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, and in 2013 Così fan tutte at the Paris Opera.

While a director of photography in television, Diot was introduced by Bernard Sobel to Patrice Chéreau, with whom he subsequently worked extensively. Their first joint creation was in 1967, for Les Soldats by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. Diot then introduced Hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide lamp (HMI) theater projectors, usually reserved for the cinema or sports events. Until the mid-1980s, he used techniques such as black-and-white, backlighting and shadows to create an onstage environment of chiaroscuro, or of twilight, a poetic atmosphere that eventually became their joint trademark: Diot-Chéreau.

They worked together in Chéreau's first theatre, the Théâtre de Sartrouville, from 1966, in a team with together with stage designer Richard Peduzzi and costume designer Jacques Schmidt.

As part of this team, he designed the lighting for the Jahrhundertring (Centenary Ring), the production of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, at the Bayreuth Festival celebrating the centenary of the festival and the cycle. In 1992, he designed the lighting for Philippe Découflé [fr] at the opening and closing ceremony of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville.

He has collaborated with other directors, including Philippe Avron [fr] , Jean Jourdheuil [fr] , Roger Planchon, Jean-Pierre Vincent and Jacques Weber. He designed the lighting for Peter Zadek's 1988 staging of Shakespeare's Der Kaufmann von Venedig at the Burgtheater, which took the action to a Wall Street background. The artist's conversations with Zadek are part of a 2012 book Peter Zadek und seine Bühnenbildner (Peter Zadek and his stage directors), edited by Elisabeth Plessen [de] . In 2011 he designed the lighting for Janáček's Katya Kabanova at the Vienna State Opera, staged by André Engel [fr] . In 2013 he designed the lighting for Mozart's Così fan tutte at the Paris Opera, staged by Ezio Toffolutti and conducted by Michael Schønwandt.[10]

Diot received the Molière Award in the category Best Lighting Design, in 2001 for Brecht's Le Cercle de craie caucasien,[11] in 2004 for L'Hiver sous la table [fr] ,[12] directed by Zabou Breitman at the Théâtre de l'Atelier, in 2005 for Ödön von Horváth's Le Jugement dernier,[13] and in 2006 for Shakespeare's Le Roi Lear,[14] directed by André Engel. He was nominated in 2007 for Blanc by Emmanuelle Marie, staged again by Breitman.[15]