Mario Lanfranchi

After graduating from the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Milan (Accademia dei Filodrammatici)in the early 1950s, and a few experiences directing plays and operas, he was hired at RAI, at the onset of Italian television.

He was therefore a pioneer of Italia television and the first one to bring opera to the small screen, in 1956, with "Madama Butterfly", which did rise Anna Moffo to the rank of diva in the brief space of one night. He was meanwhile very active in the theater as a director and producer. In the early Sixties he left the Italian Television (coming back occasionally for some inaugurations, like Rai-TV Channel 2, Eurovision, the new Naples studios) and returned to the stage, directing and producing several works by English and American playwrights, premiering a number of plays and musicals. He wrote and produced "Festa Italiana", a colossal show with 120 performers, which broke box-office records at the Madison Square Garden of New York.

At that same time he began his career as a film director with the western Sentenza di morte (1968), followed by several other movies of different genres.

In 1980 he moved to London, where he has lived for 25 years, staging big musicals like "Lust" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" or plays like David Beaird's "900 Oneonta" at London's Old Vic and Daphne du Maurier's "September Tide" with Susannah York, which ran for years in the West End and Broadway.

Santa Maria del Piano, Parma, Italy: Living in a 16th Century villa. [October 2013]