Giorgio Strehler

Giorgio Strehler (August 14 1921 – December 25 1997) was one of the most influential directors of Italian opera and theatre.

Biography

Strehler was born in Barcola (province of Trieste) to an Austrian father and a French/Slovene mother, he grew up speaking Italian, but spoke French well and his German was passable. Suddenly becoming fatherless at the age of three, his grandfather, Olimpio Lovric, became his father figure. Olimpio was one of the finest horn players of his day and the impresario of the Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi, Trieste's Opera House. When he was seven, his grandfather died and he moved to Milan with his mother and grandmother. Milan was to become Giorgio's home until the end of his life.

As a child, Giorgio was not impressed by theater. He found it "false" and decided it did not have the power to stirs one's emotions as film did. His opinions changed one hot, summer night while on his way to the cinema. He noticed a sign advertising the Air-Conditioning posted by the theater Odeon. He walked in for some relief from the weather to see a performance of Carlo Goldoni's "Una delle ultime sere di Carnevale" being given by a company from Venice. He went every evening for the next few days to see more plays by Goldoni. Newly inspired by the theater, he applied and was accepted to the theater school Accademia dei Filodrammatici. Giorgio won all the prizes at the theater and eventually made up his school work with the help of private tutors.

During the war he went into exile in Switzerland. With Geneva's Compagnie des Masques he directed the world premiere of Albert Camus’ "Caligula". After the war he became a theater critic for "Milano Sera", but he preferred making theater rather than writing about it. It was at this time that he started the Piccolo Teatro di Milano with Paolo Grassi. It opened May 17, 1947 in the auditorium of the Broletto cinema with Maxim Gorky's "The Lower Depths". Few days later they gave Carlo Goldoni's long forgotten "Arlecchino: Servant of Two Masters" commedia dell'arte, which would go on to become the longest running play in Italian theater. In that same year he also directed "La Traviata" at La Scala, the first of many opera productions he would direct.

Giorgio Strehler focused on theater which was culturally relevant. He did not want to "pay an abstract homage to culture" or "to offer a mere distraction... passive contemplation". Instead both Giorgio and Paolo agreed that theater was "a place where people gather to hear statements that they can accept or reject".

Influences

In the 50's he gave several plays by Bertolt Brecht with whom he would became a close friend sharing his political beliefs. In 1956 Brecht attended a production of his "Threepenny Opera". Back in Berlin he wrote back "..thank you for the excellent performance of my Threepenny Opera which you have realized with a great director. Fire and freshness, ease and precision distinguish this performance from many others I have seen....it would be a joy and an honor for me if your theater could perform ...at the Berliner Ensemble's Theater ...which witnessed the first performance of this work".

His love for William Shakespeare ("Coriolanus", "The Tempest", "King Lear", "Twelfth Night", "Macbeth"), Luigi Pirandello ("Enrico IV"), and Anton Chekhov ("The Cherry Orchard", "Platonov") was unmistakable; but he always returned to Goldoni repeating the same plays decades later.

He created the role of theater director (regista was actually coined in 1929) in Italy all by himself. Until he came plays were for the most part still put on by traveling companies that were a microcosm unto themselves. They directed themselves. They had never heard of a director. He also gave prominence to Italian authors, though few in number. Strehler used to say that "Italian theater has produced few important dramatic authors - Niccolò Machiavelli, Carlo Goldoni, Luigi Pirandello - but an enormous number of actors. Between 1500 and 1700, every self-respecting court in Europe had to have a company of Italian actors".

He originally had not intended to become an actor. He enrolled in fact in the law school at the University of Milan planning to become a criminal lawyer. He said "a profession as I imagined it was very close to the theater". But then war came and it changed everything.

He has influenced three generations of actors and inspired many around the world. His influence in the English speaking world is less felt. As he spoke little English and did not direct many plays in this language. However he was given the Légion d'honneur by the French government and was named director of the "Union of the Theatres of Europe" in Paris in 1985. The first Pan-European theater project. He was President of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982.

The visual impact of his productions always concerned Strehler. The stage designers Luciano Damiani and later Ezio Frigerio closely collaborated with Strehler for many years, both for theatrical and operatic productions.

When he died in Lugano, Switzerland and the funeral in Milan was attended with great participation of citizens and politicians. The parade lasted for over two days after leaving from the center of via Rovello of Piccola Scala. His ashes were deposited in the cemetery of Trieste.

Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, the Italian past president said his death "deprives Italy and the world of a great human and artistic figure, a keen interpreter of modern culture, socially sensitive and fascinating esthetically". Paolo Villaggio, who was playing Molière's "The Miser" under his direction stated "Giorgio has been and still is theater in Italy". Vittorio Gassman hailed him as "the greatest director along with Luchino Visconti", and for Riccardo Muti, music director of La Scala, "there is an immense void in theater and in our culture. I will always be in his debt for the artistic experience that we lived through together as he questioned us on Mozart and Verdi". Finally Carla Fracci, Prima Ballerina, and her husband Beppe Menegatti in an open letter said it best: "The million lights have gone out that you, maestro, lit up over the many years to give us joy in the night of a deserted theater. It is gospel truth that theater, as life itself, is only a desert without a true maestro".

His great grandson is Davey Strehler the lead singer of a band called The Raven. He lives his legacy behind with an incredible young talent, that now resides in Florida.

Famous opera productions

*"Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher" (Arthur Honegger) La Scala, Milan (1946)
*"Lulu" (Alban Berg) Venice (1949)
*"La favola del figlio cambiato" (Gian Francesco Malipiero), Venice (1952)
*"The Fiery Angel" (Sergei Prokofiev) Venice (1955)
*"L'histoire du soldat" (Igor Stravinsky) Piccola Scala, Milan (1957)
*"Un cappello di paglia di Firenze" (Nino Rota) Piccola Scala, Milan (1958)
*"Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" (Kurt Weill) Piccola Scala, Milan (1964)
*"Die Entführung aus dem Serail" (Mozart) Salzburg Festival (1965)
*"Cavalleria rusticana" (Pietro Mascagni) La Scala, Milan (1966)
*"Fidelio" (Beethoven) Florence (1969)
*"Simon Boccanegra" (Verdi) La Scala, Milan (1971), Vienna State Opera (1984)
*"Le nozze di Figaro" (Mozart) Paris (1973), Milan (1980)
*"The Magic Flute" (Mozart) Salzburg Festival (1974)
*"Macbeth" (Verdi) La Scala, Milan (1975)
*"Falstaff" (Verdi) La Scala, Milan (1980)
*"Don Giovanni" (Mozart) La Scala, Milan (1987)
*"Così fan tutte" (Mozart), Piccolo Teatro, Milan (1998) (note: Strehler died during the final rehearsals)

Famous theatre productions

* "Richard II", Shakespeare (1948)
* "Julius Caesar", Shakespeare (1953)
* "Coriolanus", Shakespeare (1957)
* "Power Games" (an adaptation of Shakespeare's first Henriad) (1965)
* "Re Lear", Shakespeare (1972)
* "The Tempest (play)" Shakespeare (1978)
* "Harlequin" in all its version, the oldest and most famous Italian show(beginning from 1947)
* "The Trilogy of Holiday" (1954)
* "Servant of Two Masters" by Goldoni (1964)
* "Il campiello" (1975) by Goldoni
* "Platonov" by Chekhov (1959)
* "The Garden of Ciliegi" by Chekhov (1955 and 1974)
* "The Mountain Giants" (1947, Piccolo Teatro, Milan; 1966, Teatro Lirico/Piccolo Teatro, Milan; 1994 both in Milan and in Vienna at the Burgtheater), Pirandello
* "As You Desire Me" (1988 to present) by Pirandello
* "El nost Milan" (1955 and 1979) and Egoist by Bertolazzi (1960)
* "The House of Bernarda Alba" by García Lorca (1955)
* "The Storm", Strindberg, Piccolo Teatro, (1980)
* "The Visit of the Old Lady" of Durrenmatt (1960)
* "The Great Magic" by Eduardo De Filippo for drammaturgia contemporary (1985)
* "Three Penny Opera" by Bertold Brecht (1956)
* "The Good Person of Setzuan" by Bertold Brecht (1958, 1981 and 1996)
* "Saint Joan of the Stockyards" by Bertold Brecht (1970)
* "Galileo Galilei" by Bertold Brecht (1963)
* "Das Spiel der Mächtigen", Salzburg Festival, 1974; Burgtheater, Vienna, 1975
* "Trilogie der Sommerfrische" (Trilogia della villegiatura), Carlo Goldoni, Vienna, Burgtheater, 1974

10 October 2005 A stretch of road in front of the Politeama Rossetti in Trieste has been dedicated to Giorgio Strehler.

External links

*imdb name|id=0834150|name=Giorgio Strehler
* [http://www.strehler.org/ Giorgio Strehler Memorial Site] it icon