«Luchino Visconti wanted to carefully see all of my drawings, one by one.
“You have a good hand, where did you study?”.
“Here, at the Academy”.
“Oh, right, for you Florentines it's easy: you've got Beauty in your own blood”».
 

A century after the birth of Franco Zeffirelli (Florence, Feb. 12, 1923 - Rome, June 15, 2019) there's an opportunity to remove the figure of the director from the chronicle, of which he was a cultural protagonist, and to investigate the meaning of his work in history.

Zeffirelli represented the example of a musical theater never aimed at a cultured or wealthy elite, capable instead of capturing a wide and popular audience thanks to the spectacularity of his stagings and the truly pioneering fusion of opera, television, and cinema. With him, melodrama emerged from its traditional niche and claimed the position it is historically entitled to, as a heritage shared by all. The most accomplished meaning of his work probably lies in this achievement: he was the first (and last) opera director whose name was known to all Italians, even those who had never entered a theater.

Zeffirelli's collaboration with La Scala spans more than half a century and is emblematic because it allows us to follow the stylistic development of the artist, who grew up in Luchino Visconti's school, both on stage and on the film set, although he was quick to break away from the model to pursue a line of his own. He made his debut as set and costume designer in Rossini's "Italiana in Algeri" on March 4, 1953, directed by Corrado Pavolini, but only ten days later he signed his first La Scala production as a director: "La Cenerentola", again by Rossini and with Carlo Maria Giulini on the podium. The 30-year-old Zeffirelli linked his name to a very specific season: the series of operas between the 18th and 19th centuries that alternated between the big stage and the intimate and precious setting of the Piccola Scala. A series of titles culminating in the rediscovery of Rossini's "Turco in Italia" along with Gianandrea Gavazzeni and Maria Callas.

For a decade Zeffirelli is thus the author of exquisite sketches, with light and refined strokes, which are mirrored in a directorial style of playful realism: the elegance, the taste for color combinations, and the brio of the stage movements are appreciated by the public and by the regency of the Theater, which commissions him to do one title after another.

The decisive breakthrough came in 1963 with Puccini's "La bohème", especially renowed for the legendary great painting in Act II. The outcome is resounding for its synthesis of intimate poetry and spectacular realism, which organizes the scene in two horizontal planes and flaunts a virtuosic movement of the masses: the performance will never go out of fashion, will be revived countless times at La Scala and will tour the world. Together with the conductor, Herbert von Karajan, Zeffirelli translated it into a film shot in the studio in 1965, thus expanding the audience by leaps and bounds.

Beginning with "La bohème" (Jan. 31, 1963) and Verdi's subsequent "Aida" (April 22, 1963), with Lila De Nobili's splendid sets, Zeffirelli's style became increasingly charged with grandeur, a cinematic realism and a luxurious display of splendor: his theater becomes more and more a grand popular romance, a melodramatic epic whose emblematic results are Verdi's "Otello", which opened La Scala's season on December 7, 1976, with Carlos Kleiber on the podium and for the first time live on RAI television, and Puccini's "Turandot" on December 7, 1983, with conductor Lorin Maazel.

Franco Zeffirelli would return to open La Scala's season twice, in 1992 with Verdi's "Don Carlo" and in 2006 with a new version of "Aida" conducted by Riccardo Chailly. He would work till the very end, personally designing all the sketches for his stagings, even when he was no longer able to move. He passed away in Rome at 96 years old.
 

Zeffirelli's musical theatre reached millions of people all over the world. Surely, no other opera director has ever involved such a great and varied audience, before or after him.