L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 2019 www.italoamericano.org 10 L'Italo-Americano I will never forget how Fran- co Zeffirelli made me feel welcome that spring-like day on March 20, 2013 when he invited me to lunch at his Roman villa on the gently undulating Via Appia Antica, its wide green verges shaded by lofty umbrella pines. Dolly and Bianchina, his two energetic Jack Russell terriers, were roaming around the living room. An 18th century Pietà dominated the corner of the room where the maestro was sitting in a wheelchair surrounded by flow- ers, antiques and costume sketch- es. His signature smile was there, wide, open and warm. I imagine him with same magnetic smile on his final day before he died on June 15 at age 96. I arrived at the gate and rang the bell. His two adoptive sons Pippo and Lucio opened the door. They were the maestro's caring guardian angels who helped him be comfortable and safe in the last stages of his life. What kept them going was their devotion to him. Obsessed with beauty, prolific opera and film director Franco Zeffirelli started talking about the idea for a double final project he cherished: the film he had yet to direct, called The Florentines, and a film adaptation of Dante's Inferno that was never realized. "I am afraid I will not be able to carry them out this time," he said. "I am ready to face death. Time is coming. I have escaped death so many times, and death is expected when you are this old. Maybe one day, who knows, somebody else will do The Flo- rentines, which is set in the Ital- ian Renaissance," he said, as his eyes light up. The film he was dreaming about is based on the rivalry between Michelangelo and Leonardo. The master of grandeur in the- ater, cinema and opera began to look back on a long and illustri- ous career and the interview moved around the table until sun- set. We passed the hours tasting delicacies and conversing: his stories were alive. At a certain point, he started to hum a melody from Puccini's Turandot. Zef- firelli's production of Turandot is legendary. His fondness for opera came from his grandfather and uncle. "A gramophone was always on. Back then in Italy, music was a luxury intended for everyone including the poor," he said. "Opera is about ideas, feel- ings, themes -- not only plots, characters and artists singing beautifully," he added. "Opera was engendered in Florence around the 1500s by intellectuals inspired by Greek melodrama." "I shot all the films I wanted to and went back to opera when- ever I felt vulnerable and in need of reassurance. Opera for me has always been a sort of a mother figure, the mother I lost when I was six. It's like being at ease in the arms of a mother when she breastfeeds her baby who demands to be fed more, nuzzling his head against her nipples." From his movie career, he remembered his great friendship with Tennessee Williams. About Mel Gibson whom he directed in Hamlet, he said less positive things, characterizing him as "a cruel guy, a disagreeable person." The actresses he worked with were all wonderful, especially Olivia Hussey, his Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and his Vir- gin Mary in his 1977 master- piece movie Jesus of Nazareth. As Dolly and Bianchina con- tinued to roam, Zeffirelli turned the conversation to the subject of the Zeffirelli Foundation, which is now a reality in Florence. "It will be concerned almost entirely with the preservation of my work," he said. "The first gift I had from God was being born in Florence," he said. The city gave the world Michelangelo and Leonardo. Unfortunately, I do not belong to that small élite group of geniuses, but I can modestly say that I am among those Florentines who have distinguished themselves within their own professions in the world. My temperament is so typically Florentine -- we are quarrelsome people, fractious, hot-blooded individuals." Zeffirelli studied at the Acade- my of Fine Arts in Florence, starting his career as a set design- er. Film director Luchino Visconti took him under his wing as a promising young designer in 1948. His father's family, the Corsis, came from Vinci. The maestro liked to claim kinship with Leonardo, who also came from that small town outside Florence. Corsi was a notable Renaissance last name. His father Ottorino Corsi worked in textiles. "He was an inveterate lothario who spent World War I impregnating Flo- rentine wives," he told me. "He seduced my mother, Adelaide Garosi, after the war." She was a fashion designer and Corsi met her professionally in her atelier. Being a married woman with three children already, Adelaide was obliged to invent a name for her illegitimate child. "She chose Zeffiretti after a short duet from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro ('Sull'aria, che soave Zef- firetto), but the last name was misspelled in the registry," he said. "My name is very unique and it sounds fresh and springy." The film Tea With Mussolini is a semi-autobiographical tale of Zeffirelli's childhood and the female figures that surrounded him, including his English teacher, Mary O' Neill, played by Cher in the film. "I felt so lonely after my mother's death, then loneliness grew even bigger, knowing that my father was an unprincipled scoundrel," he said. "Whom could I trust? The ladies were the only source of warmth in my life. "I owe everything to my moth- er: In the '20s, she had the courage to defend her pregnancy with all her strength. She carried the love child inside her, against the will of all her relatives, who pressured her into having an abor- tion." He insisted I be his guest for dinner as well. As I departed, I had already nostalgia for a real lover of life who makes the whole world his family. MARIELLA RADAELLI A great icon of Italian art left us: Franco Zeffirelli passed away last week © Kojoku | Dreamstime.com LIFE PEOPLE MOVIES MUSIC BOOKS R e m e m b r a n c e s o f t i m e s p a s t : a l o n g lunch with Zeffirelli

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