Giorgio Strehler

Giorgio Strehler (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒordʒo ˈstrɛːler]; 14 August 1921 – 25 December 1997) was an Italian opera and theatre director.

Strehler was born in Barcola, Trieste; He became suddenly fatherless at the age of three, his grandfather, Olimpio Lovrich, becoming his father figure. Olimpio was one of the finest horn players of his day and the impresario of the Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi, Trieste's Opera House. When he was seven, his grandfather died and he moved to Milan with his mother and grandmother. Milan was to become Giorgio's home until the end of his life.

As a child, Giorgio was not impressed by theater. He found it "false" and decided it did not have the power to stir one's emotions as film did. His opinions changed one hot summer night while on his way to the cinema. He noticed a sign advertising the Air-Conditioning posted by the Odeon theater. He walked in for some relief from the weather to see a performance of Carlo Goldoni's Una delle ultime sere di Carnevale being given by a company from Venice. He went every evening for the next few days to see more plays by Goldoni. Newly inspired by the theater, he applied and was accepted to the theater school Accademia dei Filodrammatici. Giorgio won all the prizes at the academy and completed his normal education with the help of private tutors.

During the war he went into exile in Switzerland. With Geneva's Compagnie des Masques he directed the world premiere of Albert Camus’ Caligula. After the war he became a theater critic for Milano Sera but he preferred making theater rather than writing about it. It was at this time that he started the Piccolo Teatro di Milano with Paolo Grassi. It opened on 17 May 1947 in the auditorium of the Broletto cinema with Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths. Few days later they gave Carlo Goldoni's long forgotten Arlecchino: Servant of Two Masters commedia dell'arte, which would go on to become the longest running play in Italian theater. In that same year he also directed La traviata at La Scala, the first of many opera productions he would direct.

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