Vincent Lombardo, American and Italian citizen, was born and raised in New York, where he completed his studies in theatre at the City University, and successively opera studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He was a full-time member the stage directing staff of the New York City Opera, collaborated at the Metropolitan Opera as an assistant stage director, studied mime with Marcel Marceau, and took his own solo pantomime performance My Silence to over one hundred universities and theatres in North America. After leaving the conservatory, he pursued doctoral studies in Japanese Noh and Kabuki Theatre at the State University of New York, and staged Gounod's Faust for the Wilmington Opera, plus numerous State University productions, among them: The Tales of Hoffmann, The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni.

In 1978, he was invited by Maestro Claudio Abbado to collaborate in the Stage Directing Department of Teatro alla Scala, for which he was awarded an International Fulbright Grant. He subsequently continued his tour of My SIlence in Italy, performing in Milan and at the municipal theatres of Cremona, Piacenza, Bolzano, and Ravenna. In 1981, he was invited by Maurizio Scaparro, then director of the Venice Biennial, to perform his solo pantomime 'Zarathustra Circus'. The Kabuki actor Ennosuke Ichikawa III asked him to participate in the First International Seminar on Kabuki Art in Bologna, organized by ATER.

As a playwright, he has many original plays to his credit, mostly fantasies and fables influenced by Jean Piaget's exploration of the child's epistemological learning processes and their relationship to the buried creative desires in adults. Many of them entered the finals of Italy's 'Premio Riccione', and some were performed. He has two published 'libretti' to his credit: one being a version of a Heinrich Böll novel, The Lost Honour of Katherina Blum (Sonzogno Ltd., Milano), the other, a between-the-lines-investigation of the Mozart-Da Ponte Don Giovanni, which he projected in an operatic version (Azio Corghi, composer) for the Salzburg 'Mozart 2006' celebrations (Da Ponte Institute).

In recent years, he has lectured for the Austrian Consulate in Milan, notably on Gustav Mahler and W. A. Mozart's Die Zauberflöte . As a musicologist, he has written various articles on the psychology of music for the magazine Musica & Arte - Quaderni del Museo Teatrale alla Scala , directed by Mario Pasi of the Corriere della Sera, and was asked to cover the Bayreuth Festival on numerous occasions.

At the same time, famed stage director Giorgio Strehler invited him, as a playwright, to attend many rehearsals at the Piccolo Teatro. Recently, he has begun to collaborate with the magazines The Classic Voice and L'opera, contributing monthly reviews, but also articles on unexplored aspects of operatic works and history, one such being an examination of the Taoistic elements in Puccini’s Turandot .

In relation to his articles on music and psychology, he was asked to oversee the Italian versions of How the Mind Works (Mondadori, Milano 2000) and Blank Slate (Mondadori, Milano 2004) by Prof. Stephen Pinker, director of the Institute of Cognitive Science and Dean of the Faculty of Psychology of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.).

Currently, he writes poetry and is active in the stage direction of operatic theatre. Living in Milan, Italy, he travels throughout Europe, contributing essays and reviews for the following online and news-stand magazines: L’opera (Milan), Opera Wire (New York), Opera Gazet (Amsterdam).