Italian Notes: Strehler, Fo, and the Venice Biennale

It is said, with perhaps only the slightest trace of exaggeration, that seventy-five percent of the world’s art treasures reside in Italy. That figure appears with solemn regularity in the country’s tourist brochures and government pamphlets, the first as an enticement to visit the land of pasta, wine, and extra virgin olive oil—as if such culinary delights were not temptation enough—and the latter to fuel its economy and to celebrate its cultural artifacts. To wander off the heavily-trodden tourist routes in Italy is inevitably to find oneself adrift in a cultural sea of unexpected delights and to encounter sights and sounds of artistic refinement emanating from tiny hill towns of its central and northern regions and the stark landscape of its southern reaches. In no other country is artistic culture so inextricably woven into the everyday lives of its people.

Such interconnectedness is abetted by the fact that Italy’s cultural aspirations are tied to its political policy as well. While it is true that in France and England (not to mention Germany and most other industrialized nations in the West) enlightened politicians continue to support the arts at a level unimaginable in America, governmental involvement is subject to shifts in policy or the ambitions of a leader coveting posthumous fame. In Italy, however, in spite of the country’s renowned mercurial instability at the centralized level, the arts have secured a firm foothold in the psyche of politicians and populace alike. Whatever infractions politicians are guilty of, the one threshold they have never crossed with impunity is their avowed allegiance to cultural support. If, as in true in the U.S. particularly, support for the arts has to be justified as an afterthought, in Italy it is an essential emblem worn, without fear of ridicule, on the sleeve of aspiring politicians at either a local or a national level, be they to the left or the right of the political spectrum.

The primacy of the arts in Italian society and culture has created an enviable situation where the arts are not only made available through festivals that dot the Italian peninsula year round but, more significantly, are nurtured to foster a healthy relationship between the traditional arts and those of an experimental variety. Although major Italian cities take pride in their primary institutions, from museums and churches to theatres and opera houses, and lavish large sums of money toward their upkeep, small out-of-the-way towns and villages have also channeled their resources, thanks to enterprising regional boards and local citizenry, to house experimental groups and play host to national, even international, arts festivals. To stay with theatre, I am thinking of the summer festivals of Santarcangelo di Romagna and Ghibellina in Sicily, and the activities of groups such as Teatro Valdoca and Societas Raffaello Sanzio in Cesena and Akroama in Cagliari which in recent decades have done much to revitalize the avant-garde in Italy. All this adds to the vibrant heterogeneous mix that grants a sacred trust to the arts within Italian culture.

That trust was enhanced further last year, and not only because of calendrical considerations, with Venice hosting the Biennale. It was also the year in which the city of Milan hosted the 50th anniversary of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, founded there by Paolo Grassi and Giorgio Strehler in 1947. The year-long celebration, still ongoing, was initially dedicated to the memory of Grassi, who died in 1981, but by year end, with the death of Strehler at age 76, it now ironically comes to stand as a testament to the artistic genius of both men. To top it all, the Italian actor/director/playwright Dario Fo went on to win the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. A cultural annus mirabilis, indeed, even if the year had its share of tragedy, including the tremors that shattered Giotto’s delicate frescoes in the Umbrian hilltop town of Assisi.

Piccolo Teatro Di Milano

The imposing stature of Giorgio Strehler, inarguably one of our century’s most accomplished theatrical eminences, heralded the Piccolo’s emergence early...