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Maestro Still Runs the Show, Grandly
ROME — Few Italians since Fellini have had such an impact in the United States as Franco Zeffirelli, from his flower-child-era film of “Romeo and Juliet” to his opulent productions at the Metropolitan Opera.
As
he himself is the first to note: “I am very much loved,” Mr. Zeffirelli
said matter-of-factly in a recent conversation. “Eleven top productions
at the Met.”
Mr. Zeffirelli — or the maestro, as he is known — is
86 now, but his face looks decades younger, and his eyes still have a
mischievous glint. On a sweltering recent afternoon, he held court on
the veranda of his villa on the Appian Way, now an Elysian Field for
the heroes of the dolce vita years. Several well-groomed dogs milled
about, barking. Across the lush garden, guests lounged in the cabana by
the pool.
For decades, his films — including “The Taming of the Shrew” (1967), with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and “Hamlet” (1990), starring Mel Gibson — have helped make Shakespeare accessible, while his productions of “La Bohème,” “La Traviata” and
other Italian operas have kept audiences coming to the Met, which in
2008 honored him with a gala.
Critics, however, have routinely
panned his work as “tawdry,” “inflated” and “elephantine,” saying his
elaborate sets dwarf the singers. Donal Henahan of The New York Times
once referred to Mr. Zeffirelli’s career as “one of the great excess
stories of our time.” The Met has replaced some of his productions in
recent years, including “Tosca.” A new version directed by Luc Bondy
will open the Met’s season this fall.
Yet viewed from Italy —
where less is never more — his style seems less over-the-top. At once
conservative and campy, he is a central figure in the history of
Italian postwar taste, an intriguing nexus between the glory years of Anna Magnani and Maria Callas, the Berlusconi era and the Vatican.
He is famously provocative about all three.
The sex scandal that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been embroiled in since May, when his wife announced she wanted a
divorce and accused him of cavorting with very young women? “What is
the scandal?” Mr. Zeffirelli said dismissively. “I think it’s a joke.
It’s ridiculous.” “I know that Berlusconi is a man that likes a lot
women,” he continued. “I met him when he was a very strong and
efficient lady-chaser in the ’70s. When he started he was a very cute
boy who couldn’t resist having sex behind doors.”
The maestro and
the prime minister share a gift for spectacle. When Mr. Berlusconi was
first elected prime minister in 1994, he made Mr. Zeffirelli a senator
and later bought him the villa where he now lives, Mr. Zeffirelli said.
Mr.
Zeffirelli is exceedingly sniffy about more avant-garde productions and
the critics who admire them. “They destroyed the tradition of musical
culture,” he said. “They said, ‘Ah, we can’t have Tosca done the same
way,’ but the audience loves it.”
He blames critics for opera’s
shrinking audience. “It’s like somebody decides that the Sistine Chapel
is out of fashion. They go there and make something à la Warhol,” he
said. “You don’t like it? O.K., fine, but let’s have it for future
generations.”
For years he has tried to drum up interest in a
foundation in Florence to house his own work and material he
accumulated in his productions.
Mr. Zeffirelli’s taste recalls
the opulence of the Roman Catholic Church, and he has coordinated
spectacles for the Vatican, including a production of Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” in St. Peter’s Basilica in 1970.
But the maestro is not completely enthusiastic about the current pope, Benedict XVI.
“When they elected him, I felt the church was making an image error,”
he continued. “Catholic is another thing,” he said. “It’s open, it’s
theatrical, it’s flashy.” He waved his hands for effect. “When you have
to deal with the Vatican — St. Peter’s, ‘The Last Judgment’ of
Michelangelo — you have to be larger than life, you can’t be a
professor from north Germany.”
In fact, the pope, the former
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is a theologian from Bavaria, southern
Germany. “Theologically,” Mr. Zeffirelli added, he is “a wonderful
man.” The maestro, who in 1977 directed the television miniseries
“Jesus of Nazareth,” said he remained a devout Catholic. “There are
some doubts about the Virgin Mary,” he said ruminatively. “But not him.”
As portrayed in his semi-fictional 1999 film, “Tea With Mussolini,” starring Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright and Cher,
Mr. Zeffirelli, born in 1923, was the product of an out-of-wedlock
liaison. His mother, who owned a high-end dressmaking shop, was widowed
when he was a boy. He knew his father only “in flashes,” he said. “I
remember this gentleman came, especially at night. I woke up and saw
this shadowy man naked in bed with my mother.”
Back then,
children of “unknown” fathers were assigned surnames starting with a
different letter each year. Because he born in the year of “Z,” his
mother named him after a Mozart aria with the word zeffiretti, or little zephyrs. A transcription error rendered it Zeffirelli.
He studied architecture at the University of Florence but loved theater. In the late 1940s, the director Luchino Visconti spotted the blond, blue-eyed Mr. Zeffirelli working as a stagehand in
Florence. “I begged him, I showed to him my designs as a set designer,
that was my dream,” Mr. Zeffirelli said.
His first big break was
in 1949, designing the set for the first Italian production of “A
Streetcar Named Desire,” directed by Mr. Visconti. “There were lots of
stories of Visconti and myself and the relationship that developed,”
Mr. Zeffirelli said. “But the quality of my work did not authorize
anybody to doubt my serious professional preparation.”
He lived
with Visconti for three years. In his 2006 autobiography Mr. Zeffirelli
writes that he never liked to discuss his personal life, but that he
considers himself “homosexual,” not “gay,” a term he considers less
elegant.
Several years ago, Mr. Zeffirelli adopted two adult
sons, men he has known and worked with for years who now live with him,
dote on him and help manage his affairs. “I missed my father when I was
a child, I craved becoming a father myself,” he said. “But the facts of
life prevented me from doing it.”
The afternoon was turning to
evening. His adopted son Luciano helped him walk through the garden to
a bench more suitable for a photo shoot. Mr. Zeffirelli’s cellphone
rang. His productions are expensive, the conversation went, and who has
money these days? “Only the arena of Verona seems able to do it,” he
said into the phone. The Roman amphitheater there is devoting its
2009-10 season to his works.
The maestro was still directing. “In
the story,” he said, turning to this reporter and rubbing his fingers
together as if pinching salt, his face wincing in the evening glow,
“make it alive, make it alive.”