DANZA MACABRA

Born in 1933 to Susa in Tunisia, Luca Ronconi graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome in 1953 and made his debut as an actor in Tre quarti di luna directed by Luigi Squarzina. An actor in shows by Orazio Costa, Giorgio De Lullo and Michelangelo Antonioni, he began in 1963 to working as a director with the company of Corrado Pani and Gianmaria Volontè. It is the extraordinary and highly successful staging in 1969 of Ariosto'sOrlando Furioso, in the elaborate reduction from Edoardo Sanguineti, to brought him international success. Over the years he collaborated with various theatrical institutions: from 1975 to 1977 he was Director of the Theater Section at the Venice Biennale, and between 1977 and 1979 he founded and directed the Prato Theater Design Workshop, where he staged _Baccanti _by Euripides and von Hofmannsthal's The Tower. In the 1980s, fundamental milestones in Ronconian research, also regarded as unquestionable high points in the history of postwar Italian theater, are Holz's Ignorabimus (1986), Bernanos's Dialogues of the Carmelites (1988) and Chekhov's _Three Sisters _ (1989).

From 1989 to 1994 he was director of the Teatro Stabile di Torino, in 1994 he was appointed director of the Teatro di Roma, and from 1999 to 2010 he was artistic director of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, producing many important shows over the years. He still directs the School for Actors of the Milanese stable. In 2002 he founded with Roberta Carlotto the Centro Teatrale Santacristina, a production and training unit that he directs in the structure created in the countryside between Gubbio and Perugia. In 2006 he is invited to to direct to Turin five shows, which constitute the "Tomorrow Project," promoted on the occasion of the Winter Olympics.

As an opera director, to his frequentation of the "classics" ofopera Italian (Verdi, Bellini, Puccini and, above all, Rossini), and European (Bizet and Wagner), Ronconi accompanies an interesting study of the less traveled territories of musical theater, such as the great season of Italian Baroque (Rossi and Monteverdi) or contemporary operatic production, including _The Makropulos Case _by Janácek and _The Turn of the Screw _by Britten. He has also directed television versions of some of his most important performances and is a curator and exhibition designer.

Many shows have won prestigious prizes and awards, such as the VI Europe Prize for Theater at Taormina Arte (April 1998); the UBU Prize as the best shows of their respective theater seasons for "Progetto sogno" in 2000, Lolita in 2001, Infinities in 2002,_ Professor Bernhardi_ in 2005 and for "Progetto Domani" in 2006 and, more recently, the National Critics' Prize for "Progetto Lagarce" and the ETI Prize as the best show for Sogno di una notte di mezza estate. He was awarded the "Antonio Feltrinelli" Prize for Theatre Direction by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in 2008 and has received honorary degrees from the Universities of Bologna (1999), Perugia (2003), Urbino (2006) and Venice (2012). As part of the Venice Theatre Biennale, he received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in August 2012, while in March 2013, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, the Mayor of Milan presented him with the Seal of the City.

Throughout her theatrical career she has been directed by, among others, from Strehler, Visconti, Ronconi, Harold Pinter, Susan Sontag, Alfredo Arias interpreting with recognized mastery great characters of classical and modern theater. She has inspired authors such as Ginzburg, Siciliano, Patroni Griffi, Cesare Musatti and Franca Valeri, who have created for her unforgettable protagonists for our stages. from many years she also acts in French and has managed to to introduce some of her heroines, with great success, on the stages of Paris. She has written two plays, Dear Professor and Alcohol, performed for more than 200 performances, and two novels published in France, Rue Ferou and Se souvenir et oublier. The latter also published in Italy from Edizioni Portaparole under the title Ricordare e dimenticare. She has participated to more than 60 films directed by, among others, from Visconti, De Sica, Pasolini, Bertolucci, Bolognini, Brass, Giordana, Techiné and Bunuel._ Stramilano_, nostalgia in music for her city, and_ Ja das Meer ist blau_, poems and songs by Brecht and Weill, shows from she devised, see her in her new role as a singer. For her performances she has received the Ennio Flaiano Award, three Maschere d'oro, four Nastri d'argento, the David di Donatello, the Grolla d'oro, the De Sica Award and the Ciak d'oro. He has been a Grand Officer of the Italian Republic since 2004. In 2009 Robert Wilson directed her in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. In 2011 she was awarded the title of Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et de Lettres. In 2013 she starred in_ The Human Voice/The Beautiful Indifferent_ by Jean Cocteau directed from Benoit Jacquot. In 2014 she was Alice in _Danza macabra_ by August Strindberg directed by Luca Ronconi, a show with which she toured nationally and internationally until 2016. In 2017 she narrated herself in Memorie di Adriana, a stage adaptation from the book Ricordare e dimenticare, a conversation between Adriana Asti and René De Ceccatty, directed by Andrée Ruth Shammah. Also in 2017, he wrote Un futuro infinito. A short autobiography published from Mondadori. In 2018 she plays the role of _Donna Fabia _in the film Installation by Marco Tullio Giordana, from the poem by Carlo Porta.

Born to Rome, he attended La Sapienza University's Bachelor of Arts in Literature and Philosophy and the acting course at the "Silvio d'Amico" National Academy of Dramatic Art. He was assistant director to Luca Ronconi and Luchino Visconti, with whom he collaborated intensively. For RAI he directed the film_ L'uomo che ho ucciso_ from the novel 1912+1 by Leonardo Sciascia, screenplay by Domenico Rafele, Pierre Dumayet and the series Avvocati by Giancarlo de Cataldo. For the cinema he directed: Un cuore semplice, screenplay by Cesare Zavattini from the short story by Gustave Flaubert, awarded the David di Donatello, the Rizzoli Prize, the Saint Vincent Prize and the Nastro d'argento; Caccia alla Vedova, screenplay by Enrico Medioli from Goldoni's Vedova scaltra; Tosca e altre due from Franca Valeri's comedy of the same name, screenplay by Enrico Medioli. For the theater he has staged plays by classic and contemporary authors such as Pirandello, Strindberg, Goldoni, Carlo Bernari, Francesca Sanvitale, Enzo Siciliano, Franca Valeri, Cesare Musatti, Natalia Ginzburg and Corrado Augias. For the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome he staged Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly. For Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto he staged _Gogo no eiko _by Hanz Werner Henze; _Amelia al ballo _by Gian Carlo Menotti; Il giro di vite by Benjanim Britten; The Piano Upstairs by John Weidman; _Così fan tutte, Le nozze di Figaro _and Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; _Minotauro _by Silvia Colasanti. As an actor, he participated to: Measure for Measure and _Riccardo III _by Shakespeare, directed by Luca Ronconi; Nina by André Roussin, directed by Bernard Murat; Alcool written and directed from Adriana Asti; Testori's Maria Brasca, directed by Andrée Ruth Shammah; The Insertion by Natalia Ginzburg, directed by Giorgio Ferrara; _The Chairs _by Jonesco, directed by Tullio Pericoli; Danza macabra by August Strindberg, directed by Luca Ronconi. He was Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris and President of the Forum des Instituts Culturels Etrangers à Paris. From 2008 to 2012 he was President and Artistic Director of the Foundation Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, where he now serves as Artistic Director.