He was born in Erba, Milan in 1930. He studied architecture, but soon turned to theater, starting with designing the costumes for the works The Doll's House [Et Dukkehjem] and The Threepenny Opera [Die Dreigroschenoper], staged during the 1955/56 season at Milan’s Piccolo Teatro and directed by Giorgio Strehler. He worked with Strehler regularly in the coming years in various play productions. During the period from 1973 to 1996 they also collaborated in opera productions, such as The Marriage of Figaro [Le nozze di Figaro], Don Giovanni and Thus do they all [Così fan tutte]. As a stage designer he worked for the Burgtheater (Vienna) in Goldoni’s The holiday trilogy [Trilogia della villeggiatura] (1974) and Hebei’s Judith (1975). He supervised, among others, the stage designs for the operas Medea [Médée] (Opéra National de Paris, directed by Liliana Cavani); Electra (Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels, directed by Nuria Espert); Ernani (1980, directed by Luca Ronkoni); Fidelio (1999, La Scala, directed by Werner Herzog); Norma (1977, Vienna State Opera, directed by Piero Fatzoni); and, Rigoletto (1977, Polish National Opera). He designed the sets for the films Galileo and Cannibals [Galileo e I Cannibali] directed by Liliana Cavani and Cyrano de Bergerac (directed by Jean-Paul Rappeno), which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Set Design (1991). He worked on a regular basis with his wife and costume designer Franca Squarciapino. He designed the grave of Rudolf Nureyev. He directed the GNO premier production of Tosca [Tosca] in 1965, repeated in 1969, 1970 and 1971.