by Redazione Spettacoli
The actress, protagonist on the small and big screen, died on September 21 in her native city of Parma. His name is mostly associated with the golden age of Rai black and white TV dramas
Lydia Alfonsi, protagonist on the small and big screen and in the theater, died yesterday, Wednesday September 21, in Parma, her hometown. He was 94. The actress had primarily associated her name with the golden age of black-and-white Rai television drama. Her last appearance was in Roberto Benigni’s La vita bella (1997) as the publisher Guicciardini.
After intensive work in theater and film, Alfonsi became known above all for his dramatic interpretations of the teleromanzi of the 1960s. She had appeared to general television audiences in 1960 as the protagonist of La Pisana, a screenplay based on The Confessions of an Italian by Ippolito Nievo and produced by Rai to celebrate the centenary of the unification of Italy. At the time the fiction was shot, a daring scene in which the Pisana (played precisely by Lydia Alfonsi) in her nightgown invited Carlino (Giulio Bosetti) into her bedroom caused a stir.
Later, the Parma diva interpreted the dramas of literary works such as Mastro Don Gesualdo (1964), from the novel by Giovanni Verga, Luisa Sanfelice (1966), from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, and The Mystery of Luca (1969), from the Novel by Ignazio Silone. Alfonsi had his first amateur acting experiences in Parma with the Giovent student theater company and then with the Gli amici della Prose amateur theater company, with whom he had staged Luigi Pirandello’s The Pleasure of Honesty.
With this comedy she took part in a national competition in Pesaro, where she was awarded Best Actress and where she was noticed by the director Anton Giulio Bragaglia, present on the jury, who decided to hire her in his company. Her theatrical debut as a professional actress came in 1946 with Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie, directed by Bragaglia herself. Alfonsi was a theater actress for over 30 years: in 1957 she was in the cast of Il servitore di due padroni, directed by Giorgio Strehler, together with Marcello Moretti.
Thanks to her skills as a dramatic actress, she had given birth to many heroines of classical theater, such as Medea, Elettra, Elena, Fedra, and also linked her name to important Italian theaters such as the Piccolo Teatro of Milan and the Stabile of Genoa. He had acted in all films, from the dramatic to the romantic, from the western to the peplum. Among his thirty or so titles are: Life as a Dog (1950) by Steno and Monicelli, Death Traveled with Me (1957) by Marcello Baldi , The Law (1959) by Jules Dassin, The Love 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, who was awarded the title of Grand Officer of the Italian Republic by Head of State Sandro Pertini, will take place on the morning of September 24 at the Church of Santa Croce in Parma.
September 22, 2022 (change September 22, 2022 | 14:18)
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