Lugano celebrates centenary of director Gianfranco de Bosio

(ANSA) - GINEVRA, 13 SET - On 16 September, the Consulate General of Italy in Lugano will celebrate the centenary of the birth of the great Italian director Gianfranco de Bosio with a theatrical performance in the prestigious consular setting of the Sala Carlo Cattaneo, The event is proposed in collaboration with the National Committee of the Ministry of Culture for the Centenary of Maestro de Bosio and with the Cornèr Bank in Lugano, a Consulate statement said.
    Adaptation and direction by Simone Toni, in which actors, former pupils of Maestro de Bosio at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, will perform a one-act play by Ruzante (Angelo Beolco, Padua 1500-1542) composed of the "Prima Orazione per la nomina del Cornaro (Cornèr) a Vescovo di Padova" and "Il Parlamento de Ruzante che iera vegnu' de campo".
    This is the first theatrical event in the extensive series of celebratory events, currently taking place in various Italian cities, offered "en premier" in Lugano for the benefit of the Swiss-Italian public.
    Gianfranco de Bosio - recalls the consulate communiqué - is universally regarded as the man who, after many post-war studies in Italy and France, brought Angelo Beolco's hitherto neglected work back to the light of the stage, effectively rediscovering 'Ruzante' as he was: an author aware of the artistic creation he was producing, in spite of the false rusticist opinion that the literati of the 19th-century school had devised.
    The one-act play will be followed by the screening of the film 'La Betia, ovvero in amore, per ogni gaudenza, ci vuole sofferenza' (1971), directed by Gianfranco de Bosio, with Nino Manfredi, Rosanna Schiaffino, Lino Toffolo, Mario Carotenuto, Franco Pesce, based on the play of the same name 'La Betia' by Angelo Beolco, known as 'il Ruzante'.
    To mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Gianfranco de Bosio (Verona, 1924 - Milan, 2022), his personal archive has been donated to the Giorgio Cini Foundation, becoming part of the documentary heritage of the Institute for Theatre and Opera. With de Bosio's papers and materials, "the Istituto per il Teatro e il Melodramma can boast a unique corpus of documents," explains director Maria Ida Biggi, who also chairs the National Committee. "Here the memory and work of an entire generation of artists are preserved: scholars and enthusiasts have at their disposal the most complete documentation to be able to reconstruct and recount a fundamental piece of Italian theatre and cinema of the second half of the 20th century.
    The Luganese event was inspired - points out Italian Consul General Gabriele Meucci - by the first radio play by the then 23-year-old Gianfranco de Bosio, who was in Lugano, on Radio Monteceneri, in 1947 with a reading of Aeschylus' Coephoruses, together with Diego Valeri, in Manara Valgimigli's translation.