Alessandro Carletti was born in Rome.

He studied photography and painting, through which he soon discovered a passion for lighting design. In the late 1990s he started working at the Rossini Opera Festival. In 2008, he began his frequent collaborations with director Damiano Michieletto with Michael Daugherty's opera Jackie O in Lugo. He worked with the same director at Teatro San Carlo in Naples for The Abduction from the Seraglio and at Rossini Opera Festival he created lighting design for La Scala di Seta and Sigismondo. In 2011 he continued with the same director with L'Elisir d’amore in Valencia, The Greek Passion at the Teatro Massimo di Palermo, and Cosi fan tutte at the New National Theatre in Tokyo. He has also worked with directors such as Daniele Abbado, Francesco Micheli, Henning Brockhaus, Pippo Delbono, Franco Ripa di Meana, Yannis Kokkos and others. Recent productions include Il Trittico (Theater an der Wien), Don Carlo (Vienna State Opera), Cavalleria Rusticana (Teatro San Carlo, Naples), Nabucco (Royal Opera House Covent Garden), Un Ballo in Maschera (La Scala) and many others. For the 2014/15 season he created the lighting design for Il Viaggio a Reims (De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam), the play Divine Parole by Ramón del Valle Inclan (Piccolo Teatro di Milano) and Guillaume Tell at Royal Opera House Covent Garden, all three productions with director Damiano Michieletto. During the 2015/16 season, he created the lighting design for a new production of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci that was named as Best Opera Production at the Laurence Olivier Awards. Other recent productions include The Magic Flute at Teatro de la Fenice, Otello at Theater an der Wien, Il Trittico at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma and The Threepenny Opera at Piccolo Teatro di Milano. He won the Knight of Illumination Award in 2015 for Guillaume Tell at Covent Garden.