RIP Mario Lanfranchi

 Farewell to Mario Lanfranchi: he brought opera to TV and was the director of "Genova a mano armata"

 

Il Secolo XIX

By Paolo Martini

January 4, 2020

Rome - He was 94 years old. From 1957 to 1974 he was married to the soprano Anna Moffo. Mario Lanfranchi died, eminent and eclectic personality of culture and entertainment, theater, film and television director, actor and screenwriter, one of the pioneers of the small screen in our country, through which he contributed to reaffirm the very wide popularity of opera.

He died on Monday 3 January, learns Adnkronos, at the age of 94 in the curation house in Valparma di Langhirano (Parma), a few kilometers away from the seventeenth-century family villa of Santa Maria del Piano in Lesignano de ' Bathrooms where he had lived for some time. The body will be buried during a private ceremony next Friday in the Langhirano cemetery. Born in Parma on 30 June 1927, after graduating from the Accademia dei Filodrammatici in Milan, in 1952 Lanfranchi was called by Sergio Pugliese, director of television programs, to collaborate with the nascent Rai.

He was the first to bring opera to the small screen, in 1956, with Giacomo Puccini's "Madama Butterfly", which revealed to the general public Anna Moffo, then an unknown young American soprano, who became his wife the following year and from whom divorced in 1974.

There have been dozens of operas directed by Lanfranchi for TV and some also for cinema, including "La traviata" (1967) and "Lucia di Lammermoor" (1971), both interpreted by Moffo. In 1968 Lanfranchi made his debut as a film director, with the western film "Sentenza di morte".

Among his other films "Il bacio" (1974), "Genova a mano armata" (1976) and "La mistress is served" (1976). His latest film is "Venice, carnival, one love" with Rudolf Nureyev, Carla Fracci, Peter Ustinov and Charles Aznavour. For Rai Lanfranchi he also explored the field of advertising, conceiving and producing in partnership with the director Sandro Bolchi many of the most famous Carosellis during the 60s and 70s: for Ferrero ( "The friendly face", later modified in "Il Gigante Friend "with the perfidious Jo Condor), Cirio (" The country of the sun "), Banca Commerciale Italiana (with Massimo Inardi, doctor and musicologist, triumphant in the final of the champions of the"Rischiatutto "), Mobil (" I futuribili ").

Lanfranchi was the owner of an important art collection (later sold at auction) and also the owner of well-known stables of greyhounds and horses (first of trot and then of gallop). In the last thirty years he had settled in the villa of Santa Maria del Piano, inherited from his mother's family, the Balestra, noble patricians of Parma

 

LANFRANCHI, Mario

Born: 6/30/1927, Parma, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Died: 1/3/2020 Valparma di Langhirano, Parma, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Mario Lanfranchi’s western – director:

Death Sentence – 1968