<B>Lila de Nobili</B> <BR>Theatre designer with a flair for romantic mystery and nostalgia<BR>Obituary by David Jays in The Guardian<P><BR>Lila de Nobili's was a retrospective art. Her vaporous designs for theatre, opera and dance inhabited a melancholy past, creating stage pictures already mildewed at the edges. De Nobili, who has died aged 85 after a fiercely reclusive retirement, also chose her collaborators carefully - Luchino Visconti and Maria Callas, Peter Hall and Frederick Ashton. "Lila loves musty old décors," breathed Ashton, and she snatched up old fabrics at Parisian flea-markets, creating costumes which arrived on stage with past lives. <P><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4366273,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A>