Biography
Milan Čorba was born in 1940 in Bratislava, Slovakia. As a costume designer, he has mainly specialised in drama productions, but has also collaborated with Czech and foreign opera and ballet. He has also designed a host of costumes for film and television and created independently as a set designer.
In the 1960s he worked as a costume designer in the Bratislava studio of Czechoslovak Television and subsequently as a set and costume designer at Bratislava’s Divadlo na korze. From 1980 to 1992 he was engaged at the Slovak National Theatre and also cooperated with Czechoslovak Television and the film studios at Koliba and Barrandov. Between 1978 and 1988 he worked for Filmexport in Prague, participating in the creation of co-production films. The stage director Petr Weigl was his eminent artistic partner. To date, Milan Čorba has worked on more than fifty films, including the recent titles Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále (I Served the King of England, 2006), Král sokolů (Thomas the Falconer, 2000), Kuře melancholik (The Melancholy Chicken, 1999), Orbis Pictus (1997), Pták Ohnivák (The Fire-bird, 1997).
When it comes to Czech theatre, he has primarily collaborated with the National Theatres in Prague, Brno and Ostrava, with Činoherní klub, Divadlo Na zábradlí, the Husa na provázku theatre and HaDivadlo in Brno. As regards recent Prague National Theatre drama productions, he designed costumes for, among others, Turrini’s Joseph and Mary (2006), Schiller’s Mary Stuart (2000), Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman (1998), Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1996), and for Verdi’s opera La traviata (1979).
As a costume designer he has worked alongside leading directors – Ľubomír Vajdička, Martin Huba, Jiří Menzel – and set designers, above all Ladislav Vychodil, Jozef Ciller, Ján Zavarský, Jan Dušek and, formerly, Josef Svoboda.
Since 1974 he has taught at the Theatre Faculty of the University of Performing Arts in Bratislava, where in 1995 he was appointed professor. From 1990 to 1996 he held the post of dean and between 1996 and 2002 the post of vice-chancellor.Update: January 2008