Ralph Koltai, Set Designer, Dies at 94

The celebrated set designer Ralph Koltai died on December 15, in Châtellerault, France, following a short illness. He was 94.

Born in Berlin in 1924, he was to the United Kingdom in 1939 by his father, a physician. From 1945 - 47, he served in intelligence in the Royal Army Service Corps, among other things working as a translator at the Nuremberg trials; after the war, he became a British citizen. From 1948 - 51, he studied at Central School of Arts and Crafts, earning a diploma with distinction. According to Wikipedia, "Soon after his graduation, his designs for Sadler's Wells Opera, Covent Garden Opera, and Ballet Rambert began to gain notice." His style, which was highly sculptural and frequently abstract, struck a distinctly modernist note.

According to Wikipedia. "Koltai was influenced by European theatre practitioners such as Bertolt Brecht and Vsevolod Meyerhold. 'What I wanted to do was to find a single image which would express what the author was saying, rather than just provide illustrations,' he said of his design principles. 'I wanted to show the idea, the concept.' He told critic Michael Billington in 1984 that he attempted to find 'a style that seeks to find the right metaphor for each work.' In 1963, for the RSC at the Aldwych Theatre, London, he set Rolf Hochhuth's The Deputy (also known as The Representative), about Pope Pius XII's connection to the Nazis. He later commented: 'My concept was to set it in a gas chamber that was also the Pope's study -- it showed that the Vatican and the extermination chambers were part of each other.' His first work for the RSC had been the previous year's production of Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle."

Koltai's credits included more than 100 opera productions, including The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny for Sadlers Wells Opera, under the guidance of Lotte Lenya; a Ring Cycle for English Opera Company; The Flying Dutchman and La Traviata for Hong Kong Arts Festival, and, in 2016, the so-called Figaro Trilogy (The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro, and Elena Langer's Figaro Gets a Divorce) from Welsh National Opera. He designed 30 productions for Royal Shakespeare Company, where he was an associate designer from 1963 - 1966. Other notable designs included Two Brothers for Ballet Rambert; Raymonda for Australian Ballet; Tannhäuser , the opening production at Sydney Opera House; Les Soldats for Opéra de Lyon; Pacific Overtures (with 102 scene changes) for English National Opera; the West End musical Metropolis (based on Fritz Lang's silent film classic; and a revival of Howard Brenton's notorious drama The Romans in Britain for Sheffield Crucible.

On Broadway, his credits included the drama Soldiers, noted for its controversial portrait of Winston Churchill; an all-male As You Like It, first seen at the National Theatre; a repertory of Cyrano de Bergerac and Much Ado About Nothing, from Royal Shakespeare Company, starring Derek Jacobi and Sinéad Cusack; the spy drama Pack of Lies; the infamous musical flop Carrie (which began at RSC), and a revival of My Fair Lady, starring Richard Chamberlin and Melissa Errico. (This production, for which he was credited with "original designs," was reportedly reworked by others.)

His awards included the London Drama Critic Award's designer of the year citation in 1967 for As You Like it and Jules Feiffer's black comedy Little Murders; the Society of West End Theatres' designer of the year award for Ibsen's Brand, staged at the National Theatre in 1978); a London Drama Critics Award for a 1981 RSC production of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Love Girl and the Innocent; a Society of West End Theatres' award for Cyrano de Bergerac.

His many awards from the Prague Quadriennale include a gold medal for stage designer in 1975; Golden Triga National Awards in 1979, 1991, and 2003; and a silver medal for stage design in 1987. He was designated a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1983 and elected Royal Designer for Industry of the Royal Society of the Arts in 1984. USITT rendered him a special award for distinguished service to theatre in 1993. He was elected a fellow of the Academy of Performing Arts in Hong Kong in 1994 and honorary fellow of The London Institute in 1994, elected as fellow of Rose Bruford College in 1999, and given an honorary degree from The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts in 2007. Retrospective exhibitions of his work were held at the Lethaby Galleries, London Institute, in 1997 and in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taipei in 1998 -99. He also co-founded, with the late John Bury, the Society of British Theatre Designers.

His book, Ralph Koltai - Designer for the Stage, was first published in 199; a revised and expanded edition followed in 2003.

More recently, Koltai devoted himself to creating a series of bas-relief sculpture/collages. According to his website, "They are mostly made from found objects on farms near his studio in France. He selects panels or pieces, predominantly metal, and dissects them in a compositional form...Although they are not in themselves narrative, many spring from his former theatre designs that were themselves conceived in a similar manner. A sheet of rusty metal became a wall in Simon Boccanegra, a polished dish and sphere became the entrance to Caliban's cave in The Tempest, and the root of a tree became the setting for Howard Brenton's play The Romans in Britain." An exhibition of these works was held at the National Theatre in London in 2010.

Koltai's first marriage, to the costume designer Annena Stubbs, ranged from 1954 - 76, ending in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Jane Alexander Koltai, whom he married in 2008.