Luchino Visconti: Epistolario

Language Italian
ISBN 9791280491152
 

Luchino Visconti through his letters, those written and those received during a career that forever marked 20th century art, theatre and cinema. As the first of two massive volumes, this book covers the years from 1937 to 1961 (with a small antecedent in 1920). It is a crucial period for the birth and consolidation of the Visconti myth: from his apprenticeship with Renoir to the Resistance during the years of Fascism, from the memorable theatre and opera productions to his cinematographic fortunes, from the ‘invention’ of neo-realism with Ossessione to the definitive masterpiece Rocco e i suoi fratelli. 

The letters number a little over seven hundred: in dialogue with the director are personalities of the calibre of Maria Callas, Franco Zeffirelli, Vittorio Gassman, Ingrid Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Salvador Dalí, Cesare Zavattini, Suso Cecchi d'Amico, along with many other actors, directors, writers, producers, impresarios, politicians, and cinema and theatre workers. A concert with about two hundred instruments around a single master, a rare opportunity to discover, through the words of Visconti and those who had the opportunity to know him and collaborate with him, the way of working, thinking, acting of a unique character, capable with his vision of influencing the cultural history of our country. 

Visconti's first letter to Hans Werner Henze dates from 8 April 1954, in which he refers to the Roman premiere of Boulevard Solitude. Then in 1956 there is an exchange of letters between Henze and Visconti as well as the dancer Jean Babilée and Visconti about the Maratona project and finally in 1957 between Henze and Visconti as well as the choreographer of Maratona, Dick Sanders and Visconti.