Francesco Vitali graduated from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in set design in 1996 with honors. In 1994 and 1995 he studied in California at San Francisco State University in the faculty of theater art, working as a scenographer for various productions in prose.

In 1997, he worked as a light designer and photographer in New York and San Francisco for the Sept theater show, based on M. Maeterlinck’s Les Sept Princesses, promoted by the Municipality of Milan, with the adaptation and direction of Claudia Botta, begins thus a successful career that led him to work in different productions with different directors.

In 2000 he won a public competition as a production designer organized by the European Union and the Teatro Massimo Foundation of Palermo; he then worked as a scenographer for some musical theater productions.

In 2002 he won the prize for best director of photography at the Meeting of independent record labels, for the music video Umanoide by Puntog Blu.

In the same period, he also began his long collaboration with the director Federica Santambrogio and the director and choreographer Deda Cristina Colonna for some operas and dramatic theater works as a lighting designer, set designer and costume designer.

His collaboration with Deda Cristina Colonna also includes a theatrical show “Voluptas dolendi i gesti del Caravaggio” (on stage from 2002 to 2006) and the ArtFILM based on the same theatrical performance of which he was director and director of photography. The ArtFilm “Voluptas dolendi i gesti del Caravaggio”, produced in 2007 and published in 2010 by the Marco Fodella Foundation, is still projected worldwide and broadcast on SKY CLASSICA HD channels from 2010 to 2018.

His collaboration as set designer, lighting designer and costume designer with director and coreographer Deda Cristina Colonna, continues with the opera Armide, by Jean-Baptiste Lully, staged from 2015 to 2020 in Austria Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik, Germany Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci and finally in Poland for Warszawska Opera Kameralna, where it was broadcast on the national television channel TVP Kultura in 2017/2018. In 2020 the collaboration continues with Jean Philippe Rameau’s Opera Castor et Pollux for Warszawska Opera Kameralna where he created sets, lights and costumes, a work postponed in 2021 due to the pandemic caused by COVID19.

In 2018 he wrote, directed and co-produced a documentary entitled “Villa Visconti Borromeo Litta, four centuries of history, a journey through time between art delights and water games”. Sponsored by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, co-produced by the Amici di Villa Litta Association, the Municipality of Lainate and Roadmovie, screened in Italy and worldwide starting from 2018, also published on DVD by the Amici Association of Villa Litta, purchased by the TV channel SKY ARTE and broadcast from March 2020.