Robert Wilson has died. Theater as a total work of art. Bob, the American who loved Milan and Spoleto.

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Robert Wilson , known to the world as Bob, came to Milan for the last time last April. He loved this city, with which he had a familiar relationship, having begun working there in the late 1970s on an Edison ballet at the Teatro Nazionale, but continuously since 1987 thanks to a memorable "Salome" at La Scala, conducted by Kent Nagano, with costumes by Gianni Versace and Montserrat Caballé in the title role. He came for the opening of the Salone del Mobile and to curate an image and sound project around the Pietà Rondanini at the Castello Sforzesco, which sparked a stupid controversy, since people were now unaccustomed to sitting in silence and listening to the hushed tones of their own hearts. He, this pivotal figure of contemporary culture who passed away a few hours ago at the age of 83, struck down by a fulminating illness that, however, did not overcome his desire to continue producing until his final hours, was sitting at the back of the room where Michelangelo's unfinished masterpiece is displayed, very tall and tired, but still strong enough to order anyone who entered to turn off their cell phones.

Ironic as he was, an imaginative constructor of visual and aural alliterations, he nevertheless tolerated disrespect, not so much for art, including his own, but for the artistic enjoyment of others. We went to say goodbye; we were united by a shared project in memory of Giorgio Ferrara, for many years president and artistic director of the Spoleto Festival, who had produced "nine of my operas and comedies," and an equal veneration for Adriana Asti , who had also passed away, more or less at the same time—as they well know in hospitals, the new moon is always a terrible thing for the elderly and infirm. He spoke of new projects. A creator of worlds, this Texan architect, whose writings and performance scripts are coveted by collectors, but also his famous chairs, which have entered the collective imagination as a shared archive of design, conceived of the theater as a total work of art, attending to every detail of the performances he designed; but the impact of his work had always extended to other arts and all fields of creativity since his first show, dated 1968, when he founded the experimental performance company Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds named after Miss Hoffman, the dance teacher who had helped him overcome the handicap of stuttering by encouraging him to perform slow movements to release tension.

This dilated measure of time and space, this Bergsonian perception of reality, would shape his entire career and his understanding of theatrical gesture, starting with the famous Einstein on the Beach, which in 1976 would bring him to worldwide fame along with Philip Glass, the composer of the music. From Miss Hoffman, we believe, he had learned another habit: that of unrolling the lyrics to a melody when the emotion made them difficult to come out of his mouth. Sing-sing-singing.

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