Giorgio Strehler (Barcola, Trieste 1921- Lugano 1997) is a director and actor, also known as “the Director” with a capital “D”, in much the same way as he himself wrote about and thought of Theatre: as a hyperbolic challenge, a diorama, a stage on which an image of the world takes shape, where the great masters of theatre, owners by right, delicately dialogue with the population of characters and, through them, with the audience. Parallel to this “regal” way of seeing theatre which crowned him the true heir to Max Reinhardt (the last of the demiurge directors, who he had admired since he was a child), Strehler had always courted a more severe, almost Jansenistic approach, embodied in the tradition of Copeau and Jouvet, where the director – this time without the capital “D”, but no less important – began from the premise that everything is written in the text and that all that has been previously said and written can be mediated and personified by the Actor (with a capital “A”). These two ways of seeing the role of director are perfectly evident in two of his last works, namely Faust Frammenti, on which he worked continuously between 1988 and 1991, and in which he also starred in the title role, and Elvira o La Passione Teatrale (1987). These directorial concepts were also developed thanks to his family ancestry.

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