Farewell to the great director Franco Zeffirelli

The great director Franco Zeffirelli passed away this morning in Rome, at the age of ninety-six and after a long illness. Born in Florence in 1923, Zeffirelli studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and began his career in the world of cinema as a set designer, working together with Luchino Visconti. After serving as assistant director on some of Visconti’s celebrated masterpieces (such as Senso), Zeffirelli made his directorial debut in the 1950s, both in theater and film: he made his debut at La Scala in Milan in 1954 (directing La cenerentola and L’elisir d’amore), while his first directorial effort, which came at the age of thirty-four, was Camping in 1957, a youthful comedy about a couple’s (Nino Manfredi and Marisa Allasio) vacation.

After directing several major operas (such as La bohème,Aida, and La traviata) at La Scala in the early 1960s, Zeffirelli returned to the cinema in 1965, but it was three years later that he had his great success with the film Romeo and Juliet, starring Leonard Whiting as Romeo and Olivia Hussey as Juliet: the film, a pleasant critical success, reviewed favorably almost unanimously, received an Oscar for cinematography and one for costumes (as well as a nomination for best director), but it also earned Zeffirelli the David di Donatello as best director and the Nastro d’argento as director of the best film (moreover, last year, for the film’s fiftieth anniversary, a dedicated exhibition was also organized). Success also for Zeffirelli’s other masterpiece, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, which in 1972 told the story of St. Francis of Assisi: for this film Zeffirelli won again and for the last time in his career the David di Donatello as best director.

Zeffirelli continued to achieve success with other films such as the 1976 television production Jesus of Nazareth, and again The Champion, in 1979, or The Young Toscanini, in 1988. Instead, it was in 1990 that he returned to Shakespeare, more than 20 years after the success of Romeo and Juliet: in that year Zeffirelli curated a film adaptation ofHamlet. Another success was the 1999 film Un tè con Mussolini, which recounts the events of World War II in Tuscany (it won the BAFTA for best supporting actress, to Maggie Smith, and the Silver Ribbon for best costumes). Thinning out his engagements in the 2000s, his last film for the cinema was 2009’s Homage to Rome, a 20-minute documentary on Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, starring Andrea Bocelli and Monica Bellucci, which won the 2009 Colosseum Award.

Recently, Zeffirelli had promoted the founding of the Franco Zeffirelli International Center for the Performing Arts, a fund where, the presentation of the project states, “all documents, from sketches to studies for theatrical and film productions, from director’s notes to scripts, from set photos to press reviews, regarding Maestro Zeffirelli’s activity in the world of entertainment, Italian and foreign, from the postwar period to the present day, have come together.” Housed in the San Firenze complex, right in the center of the Tuscan capital, the Center is divided into a Museum, an Archive and a Library and constantly hosts exhibitions and initiatives for the cultural popularization of the performing arts and for the training of students in the field of theatrical disciplines.

Farewell to the great director Franco Zeffirelli

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