La tempesta (Strehler, 1977-78 and 1983-84)

La tempesta

La tempesta by Giorgio Strehler (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGnLiAmlJO0)

Notes on the recorded version of the performance, directed by Carlo Battistoni and broadcast by RAI, the Italian national TV, on 14th December 1981

Anna Maria Cimitile

Giorgio Strehler’s La tempesta is a landmark Italian adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, produced by Teatro Piccolo in Milano, directed by Giorgio Strehler and first performed at Teatro Lirico on 28 June 1978. It was run in repertory in 1983 and 1984.

Strehler offered a metatheatrical staging of the play, which was enhanced in the recording for TV directed by Carlo Battistoni. In this respect, see especially the scene of the tempest, on which the opening titles of the film run and which includes shots of what goes on backstage to enable the performance (from 00:00:00 to 00:06:30). See also Ariel’s first apparition (00:18:48), Ariel as Harpy (01:56:50), and Prospero’s renunciation of his magic (02:38:08). Caliban’s first entrance from under the stage (00:28:30) is a central moment in the televised theatre performance, as it is shot from the standpoint of Caliban who sees, from below, Prospero and Miranda waiting for him to come out from the trapdoor; in the shot, their figures serve as background to the slave’s dark hand and arm emerging from below and seen in close up.

About Strehler’s production, Arthur Horowitz has written: ‘Strehler employed commedia dell’arte as a vital element in his staging, bringing back to Italy the action as well as something of the theatrical style of this drama of Milanese and Neapolitan treachery, sorcery, and trickery’ (A. Horowitz, Prospero’s “True Preservers” Peter Brook, Yukio Ninagawa, and Giorgio Strehler — Twentieth-Century Directors Approach Shakespeare’s The Tempest [Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004], 21). And In 1978 the Italian director himself published his ‘Notes on The Tempest’, underlining the metatheatrical dimension of the opening scene:

But that sudden tempest, so compelling, so full of anguish, so “real”; it wasn’t real? Those human beings dying in travail; they weren’t real? That wasn’t theatrical verisimilitude? It was “pretend,” theatre within theatre! It seemed real theatre, it seemed like reality, but instead it was a theatrical invention. It must have been “commanded” by someone, someone out of sight, who pulled the strings and created the sounds and the events, from behind those beaten sails. It was a theatrical effect, the rainstorm in a show within a show, a theatrical illusion! (Strehler, ‘Notes on The Tempest’, trans. by Thomas Simpson, PAJ 24:3 [2002], 2)

Main characters and cast for the RAI TV recorded performance (as from the credits at the end of the film)

Prospero: Tino Carraro

Caliban: Massimo Foschi

Ariel: Giulia Lazzarini

Miranda: Fabiana Udenio

Alonso: Claudio Gora

Ferdinand: Massimo Bonetti

Gonzalo: Mario Carrara

Antonio: Osvaldo Ruggieri

Trinculo: Paolo Falace

Stefano: Mimmo Craig

Set and costume design: Luciano Damiani

Stage lighting: Alberto Savi

Music: Fiorenzo Carpi

Italian translation by Agostino Lombardo

Director for the RAI TV recording: Carlo Battistoni. The film was broadcast on 14 December 1981

More info and documents about the production at: https://www.giorgiostrehler.it/spettacoli/william-shakespeare/la-tempesta-1978/ (in Italian)