Dead Lydia Alfonsi, diva of black and white. The last role in “Life is beautiful”

Protagonist on the small and big screen and in the theater, Lydia Alfonsi died yesterday, Wednesday 21 September, in Parma, her hometown. She was 94. The actress
he had tied his name above all to the golden period of Rai television dramas in black and white. His last appearance been in the film by Roberto Benigni The beautiful life (1997), in the role of the publisher Guicciardini.

After aintense activity theatrical and cinematographic, Alfonsi had reached the popularity especially for his dramatic interpretations of the sixties television novels. She had revealed herself to the general television audience in the 1960s as the star of The Pisanaa script based on The Confessions of an Italian by Ippolito Nievo and made by Rai to celebrate the centenary of the unification of Italy. He did a stirat the time of the recording of the fiction, one bold scene in which the Pisana (interpreted precisely by Lydia Alfonsi), in nightgowninvited Carlino (Giulio Bosetti) to his bedroom.

The Parma diva had later interpreted the screenplaytraits from literary works such as Master Don Gesualdo (1964), from the novel by Giovanni Verga, Luisa Sanfelice (1966), from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, e Luca’s secret (1969), from the novel by Ignazio Silone. Alfonsi had made his first amateur experiences as an actress in Parma with the theater group Student youth and then with the amateur dramatics company The friends of prosewith whom he had staged The pleasure of honesty by Luigi Pirandello.

With this play he had taken part in a national competition in Pesaro, where she had been awarded as best leading actress and where she had been noticed by the director Anton Giulio Bragaglia, present in the jury, who had decided to sign her in his company. His theatrical debut as a professional actress it had happened in 1946, with Anna Christie by Eugene O’Neill, directed by Bragaglia himself. Alfonsi had continued to act in the theater for over 30 years: in 1957 she had been in the cast of The servant of two masters together with Marcello Moretti for the direction of Giorgio Strehler.

Thanks to his skills as a dramatic actresshad given birth to many heroines of the classical theater, such as Medea, Elettra, Elena, Fedra linking his name also to important Italian theaters, such as the Piccolo Teatro of Milan and the Stabile of Genoa. She had acted in all kinds of films, from drama to romantic, from western to peplum. thirty titles include: Life as a dog (1950) by Steno and Monicelli, Death traveled with me (1957) by Marcello Baldi, The law (1959) by Jules Dassin, The loves of Hercules (1960) by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, The dolphins ( 1960) by Citto Maselli, Morgan the pirate (1960) by Primo Zeglio, The Trojan War (1961) by Giorgio Ferroni, A man to burn (1962) by Valentino Orsini, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (1962), Face to face ( 1967) by Sergio Sollima (1967), Open doors (1990) by Gianni Amelio.

The funeral of the actress – awarded the title of Grand Officer of the Republic
Italian by the Head of State, Sandro Pertini – will be held in the morning of Saturday 24 September in church of Santa Croce in Parma.