Intervista a Franco Zeffirelli

FEBRUARY 2003 eing a set designer is not so much an asset, an item in Franco Zeffirelli’s repertoire as a man of theatre. It is such an integral Upart of his relationship with the medium that any attempt to evaluate it separately becomes very difficult. Naturally, seen out of context, framed and under glass, Zeffirelli’s designs for his stage-sets may look simply ‘beautiful’ to the uninitiated; but as regards their ‘beauty’ – harmony, charm, skill or anything else – I should like to hear the opinion of an art critic, since I am not an expert in that field. It is obvious that they may be judged without taking into account their original purpose; designing sets is a servile task, Tribute to that is not required to lead an independent existence, but it can create and has created masterpieces. Mantegna’s cartoons, now at Hampton Court, originated as set designs, and you cannot imagine anything more delightful than Inigo Jones’s settings for the masques performed at the court of the Stuart kings, now in the Duke of Devonshire’s collection. Leaving others to decide whether the highly talented Zeffirelli is to be admitted to this Olympus of set designers, I should like to RANCO EFFIRELLI say something else about his work; I have to be careful how I say it, because I realize it may sound limiting whereas speaking as a F Z theatre critic I mean it as praise. It is this. His set designs will never be able to be exhibited in their entirety – for the theatre alone, which is my province, Zeffirelli has been set designer, and from 1959 onwards, nearly always director of at least thirty plays – but if we examine the vast collection of sketches, drawings, watercolours etc. and pretend we are looking at them without knowing what play they were designed for, and only later, going through the list of titles, try to attribute them, we can never make a mistake. In other words, although the artist is always true to himself, to his style, his taste, his favourite colours – though his sketches are always unmistakable, just as a design by Lila De Nobili or a costume sketch by Piero Tosi is unmistakable – Zeffirelli’s primary objective is to remain faithful to the text, to illustrate it, to comment on it, to recount it, to interpret it and to communicate this interpretation to the audience; in other words to invite us to enter a different, unknown, enchanted world for the space of a couple of hours. This may seem obvious, but in actual fact it isn’t. At a time when architects are designing houses that are impossible to live in but very impressive in photographs (as well as theatres without acoustics, stadiums where grass doesn’t grow, churches that look like hotels, airports on swamps permanently covered in a blanket of fog), and are, in effect, erecting monuments to themselves – there is no lack of set designers and directors for whom the text they have chosen to stage is merely an excuse for self-promotion. But Zeffirelli – who as a personality, and if you like an exhibitionist, is second to few in our era dominated by advertising – has never in his life designed a single set that was not faithful to the text to be staged, or at least to his directorial concept of that text. He has always sacrificed any narcissistic tendency to this end, at the cost of courageously challenging clichés. For example, everyone knows that Verga is a realist writer, so the first thing every director of La lupa (The Wolf Hunt ) does is to avoid peasant caps, black shawls and a cloudless Sicilian sky. You need more imagination to reinvent these elements than to avoid them and turn the tragedy into Japanese No theatre. But Zeffirelli elegantly preserved the setting the text demands and at the same time injected new life into the conventions by introducing original features. There were still the picturesque stereotyped houses, but the steeply sloping stage introduced an unexpected and disturbingly dramatic element, and suggested the domination of certain characters over others. His sets for the two early Shakespeare plays at the Old Vic, Romeo and Juliet in 1960 and Much Ado About Nothing in 1965, were also traditional yet innovative, reassuring (because they were not aggressive) yet surprising. The first production brought the tragedy to life for English audiences by adopting the simple device of taking Shakespeare literally and making the lovers two young people who find themselves in an adult world they don’t understand and that doesn’t understand them. This literal interpretation required the story to be set in a credible, realistic context, but without neglecting its fairytale aspect. His set designs took their inspiration from fifteenth-century Italian painting, in the more homely, less high-flown style – almost a blend of Carpaccio with the human overtones of Goldoni. By contrast, Much Ado About Nothing was set in a totally imaginary Italy. The play is a good-natured joke about two young people who pretend to despise each other, but discover they are in love thanks to the trick played on them by some friends. Zeffirelli created a warm-hearted, riotous Sicily under the Bourbons, and a group of amusing mimes were responsible for the rapid scene changes and moved the props within full sight of the audience or suddenly became immobile as part of the décor. One of these ‘statues’, who had overheard Benedick pouring his heart out when he discovered he was in love, came to life for a moment and held out his hand to the unhappy fellow, a gesture that was inevitably greeted with applause. In both cases the sets contributed immensely not only to the success of the production, but also to highlighting those aspects of the text that the director chose to underline at the time. They were colourful, lively, dynamic sets like the Shakespearian plays that inspired them. But at other times – something that is not always recognised – the ‘sumptuous’ and ‘excessive’ Zeffirelli of the opera productions designed understated sets for the stage. There was nothing sensational about the quiet, abstract interior in which the characters in A Delicate Balance by E. Albee gathered in the deceptive, homely glow of a large Tiffany lamp, the only strong touch of colour and possible haven of peace in a silently hostile and threatening darkness. Whereas the classics (and here I must mention Chekhov’s The Three Sisters directed by Visconti in 1952. I was thought too young to appreciate the drama but was taken to admire the scene with the birches from the balcony at the Teatro Eliseo, and that magic moment is perhaps my first memory of a real emotion at the theatre) have always stimulated Zeffirelli the set designer’s more pictorial vein, modern authors have challenged him to produce more daring sets, which have ranged from the ‘cage’ illuminated by vertical spotlights creating a rain effect for Miller’s After the Fall (1965) and its play on memory, to the Six Characters in Search of an Author performed in a monstrous maxi television studio with a huge control cabin. Don’t be scandalized, the idea originated from a reading of the text, that intended to show the rather rough-and-ready kitchen as a place where the production is prepared. If our era has replaced this with the antics of the telecamera, Zeffirelli’s set seemed to say, don’t blame me. Masolino d’Amico Attore, regista lirico e cinematografico, Dalla lirica alla prosa. Dal cinema alla televisione. In Auguri Maestro, e grazie! In the 1970’s, one of the few places that a young Dal cuore del nostro cuore l’augurio che la splendida Auguri Maestro! Una gioia particolare arricchisce di sceneggiatore, scenografo e costumista che ha Italia pochi registi sono eclettici quanto Franco Grazie per le cose stupende che ci continui a far American designer could encounter the magic of the intensa avventura dei suoi primi ottant’anni continui significato questa esclamazione che diventa subito saputo e voluto mettersi in discussione anche Zeffirelli. Ha iniziato nel modo migliore, come aiuto vedere e per quelle, che continui ad insegnarci. foreign film was in the sanctuary of one’s fertile e operosa: per Lei, per la cultura d’Europa e un’acclamazione, legata all’immagine di tutta una attraverso una significativa esperienza statunitense, regista di Luchino Visconti ed è andato avanti dal Grazie Maestro per averci detto e dimostrato che “il neighborhood art house cinema. Fellini, Bergman, per la poesia che nei nostri sogni il Suo teatro e il carriera in continua evoluzione. Ottant’anni per dove fra l’altro ha diretto gli esordi di un giovane 1947 ad oggi girando diversi film, tra cui ricordo il bello” lo si ottiene con un infinito lavoro, con la Kurosawa, Truffaut and Franco Zeffirelli where Suo cinema suscitano e animano. La mente e disegnare il profilo di una personalità poliedrica, Tom Cruise: Franco Zeffirelli è tutto questo e non solo, puro interprete del classico in un’epoca Romeo e Giulietta per il quale fu anche candidato fatica , la pazienza , con il cruccio di non essere mai among the handful of great storytellers who spoke l’anima, lo spirito e il pensiero in un coinvolgimento piena di incontri, con l’arte e con gli artisti. Una rete postmoderna, controcorrente in quanto custode del all’Oscar. Numerosi anche i suoi allestimenti teatrali, soddisfatti, con la delusione dell’altrui to our hearts and souls in these nocturnal di umorali passioni, ci conducono dalla nuda terra ai di relazioni, confronti e scambi personali, che hanno canone, ma soprattutto un grande Maestro.

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