Quick-change artist

Quick-change is a performance style in which a performer or magician changes quickly within seconds from one costume into another costume in front of the audience.

When Italian actor and performer Arturo Brachetti started his career in Paradis Latin, Paris (1979) he was the only one in the world since the legendary Leopoldo Fregoli (1867-1937). Guinness World Records lists him as the fastest and most prolific in the world. His last one-man show has be seen by more than two million people worldwide. The changing of his tailcoat from black to white live and close to public was a method invented by him and is considered his artistic signature. His wardrobe consists of more than 350 costumes but evolves show by show. His performances often involve a series of characters, played consecutively one after the other, or in spoken sketches in which he plays all the roles interacting with each other.

In 2000 he was awarded the Molière Award, the highest accolade in French theatre, for "The Man with 1000 Faces," where he performs 80 different characters in a two-hour show. The show sold out in Paris for several months in Theatre Marigny, Theatre Mogador, Casino de Paris, from April 2000 to January 2005. Brachetti has created and performed about 25 acts for television and 10 plays, produced by the National Theatre of Italy. The festival "Juste Pour Rire" launched his career in North America. In the Opera field he created a personal version of L'Histoire du soldat by Stravinsky, "Peter and the Wolf" by Prokofiev and "Allegro, un po' troppo" with the Symphonic Orchestra of Rai Radio Televisione Italiana. In 2009 he was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award in London for the show "Change" at the Garrick Theatre. He returned to Paris in 2009 at the Folies Bergere with his new show about Cinema. In 2011, the French Ministry of Culture presented him with the honorary title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres Knight of Arts and Letters. In 2003 Jeffery Deaver named Brachetti in his bestseller The Vanished Man. In 2013 and 2014 he was a judge in the French TV show The Best broadcast by TF1. An animated statue of Brachetti, changing costumes every 20 seconds, is displayed at Musée Grevin, the wax museum of Paris and Montreal. In September 2013 the Frech newspaper Le Monde dedicated him an interview in the first page. In 2014 Italy he received the title of Commander in June 2014 by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.

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