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He’s gone Thursday 18 May in Romeat the age of 76 years old, George FerraraItalian director and artistic director, who from 2007 to 2020 directed the Festival of Two Worlds, an important international event of music, art, culture and entertainment that takes place every year in the city of Spoleto. Ill for some time, Giorgio Ferrara had been hospitalized until the end in a hospital in the capital.
Giorgio Ferrara’s long career: theatre, cinema and meeting Adriana Asti
Born in 1947 in Rome, Giorgio Ferrara, older brother of the journalist and writer Giuliano, lived in Moscow from 1958 to 1961, where his father was a correspondent for the newspaper l’Unità from the Soviet Union. Ferrara, then began his career helping the actor and director Luca Ronconi, then moving on to direct works by Luigi Pirandello, Carlo Goldoni, Enzo Siciliano, Franca Valeri, Natalia Ginzburg, Cesare Musatti and Corrado Augias, with actors of the caliber by Valeria Moriconi, Andrea Giordana, Franco Citti, Gato Barbieri, Paolo Bonacelli, Ilaria Occhini, Ugo Pagliai and the great Adriana Astiwhich later became his muse, wife and lifelong companion. On the big screen, his wife took part in the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci (her first husband), Luis Buñuel and Tinto Brass and, also for the big screen, her husband Giorgio Ferrara also collaborated on many milestones in the history of cinema: above all, in 1977, he directed A simple heart, winning the special prize at the David di Donatello and the Silver Ribbon as best new director. In 1984 he also directed the documentary Farewell to Enrico Berlinguer, to remember the secretary of the PCI who died the same year. During his career, Ferrari then also supervised the direction of operas, with the Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra in Milan. In recent years, however, his activity and career as artistic director had considerably intensified: from 2003 to 2007, he directed the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris while from 2007 to 2020 he directed The Festival of Two Worlds.
The Festival of Two Worlds
Giorgio Ferrara arrived at the direction of Festival of Two Worlds of Spoleto in 2003, literally saving it from an almost inevitable decline, which occurred after the death of the founder Gian Carlo Menotti and the complicated years of the artistic management of Menotti’s adopted son, Francis. In 2021, he was also appointed artistic director of the Stabile del Veneto, a role from which he resigned last April. Giorgio Ferrara, remained artistic director of Spoleto Festival for well thirteen years, until she handed over the post, after the 2020 edition, to the still current director Monique Veaute. Ferrara, has received the applause of having revived the festival after the alternation of complex years, thus recovering the acclaim and participation of both audiences and critics. The directions of Festival of Two Worlds of Giorgio Ferrara, the special place he has always dedicated to the world of the Theater is also remembered, which is of great importance to him, also thanks to the artistic partnership with his wife, the actress Adriana Asti.
Saturday 20 May, at 12:30, a meeting will be held at the Teatro Argentina, in Rome, to remember Giorgio Ferrara.
Source-tg24.sky.it