Franco Dragone

Franco Dragone (12 December 1952 – 30 September 2022) was an Italian-born Belgian theatre director.

He was the founder and artistic director of Dragone, a creative company specializing in the creation of large-scale theatre shows.

He was also known for his work with Cirque du Soleil and Celine Dion.

CNN said that Dragone was "one of the key architects of Cirque du Soleil's theatrical style", and that "while Cirque du Soleil's signature was contemporary circus, Dragone's solo work embodies more theater, dance -- and, of course, water" through the use of his "trademark" aquatic stages.

Dragone died from a severe chest infection in Cairo, Egypt, on 30 September 2022 at the age of 69.

Dragone was born in 1952 in Cairano, a small town in southern Italy.

At the age of seven, he moved to the mining region of La Louvière in Belgium with his family so his parents could work in Belgium's coal mines.

He remembers that being an "artist" was not treated seriously by the mining community in La Louvière.

His father, however, was broad-minded and enrolled Dragone in a liberal lycée.

As a student, Dragone was taught a wide range of topics and was allowed to choose his field of interest.

Dragone chose the arts.

In the 1970s he studied theatre at the Belgian Royal Conservatory of Mons.

Starting his career as an actor in subsidized Belgian art theater, he switched to activist theater, or "theater without actors" according to Dragone.

His earliest theatrical work was explicitly political, working as a director of theatre and film in the mode of the commedia dell'arte dramatist Dario Fo.

The theatre works he helped create expressed social situations, interpreting true stories of the homeless, drug addicts, and prison inmates, and casting non-actors who shared their stories to perform in the shows.

In this context Dragone began to teach staging, or visual expression, and came to believe that it was "possible to do high quality shows for mainstream people".

In the 1980s, Dragone came to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in pursuit of "a beautiful girl".

In Montreal, Guy Caron, director of the National Circus School, invited him to conduct workshops with the students and teachers at his school.

Dragone then created, directed and produced a show for the end of the school year.

Guy Laliberté saw one of these performances in 1984, the same year he formed Cirque du Soleil.

In 1985, Laliberté sought out Guy Caron to join Cirque du Soleil.

Caron, in turn, asked Dragone to join as a creator.

From the years 1985 to 1998, Dragone would direct nearly all of Cirque du Soleil's most prestigious shows and played a significant role in developing Cirque du Soleil's distinctive merging of theater and circus performance.

In the early 1990s, Dragone's reputation grew with the production of Nouvelle Expérience and Saltimbanco, nontraditional circus productions in which postmodern dance, music, and circus acrobatics were interlaced with a dreamlike narrative.

His visibility greatly increased after he directed and introduced the cutting-edge Cirque du Soleil production Mystère at the Treasure Island hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mystère helped to change the nature of production shows in Las Vegas.

While Dragone would direct only one other show with the company in Las Vegas, O in 1998, to many he was the face of Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas.

The shows Dragone created with Cirque du Soleil had single-handedly brought the contemporary circus movement into the mainstream of American entertainment.

Around the world, close to 100 million people have now seen Dragone's creations.

Like his 1998 show O for Cirque du Soleil, Le Rêve made extensive use of a custom-designed water stage.

CNN called it a "bombastic, splashy celebration of life" with "diving feats and stunning special effects".

Dragone directed Cirque du Soleil's first motion picture, Alegría, in 1999.

In 1999 Dragone directed the music video for Lara Fabian's song "Adagio".

In 2000 he amicably split from Cirque du Soleil and formed his own company called the Franco Dragone Entertainment Group (later shortened to "Dragone"), based in his hometown of La Louvière in Belgium.

In 2003 Dragone created A New Day... starring Céline Dion at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

In 2005, Dragone debuted his fourth production on the Las Vegas Strip with the opening of Le Rêve at the Wynn Las Vegas.

For this show he used performers mainly from disciplines related to gymnastics.

When A New Day ended its run in 2007, Billboard reported it was the highest-grossing residency of all time.

In 2007, he directed a new musical based on Prosper Mérimée's novella Carmen, which premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse.

He also worked on an adaption of the Divine Comedy with composer Ennio Morricone.