A great man, a great artist, an unforgettable change artist, a person of great culture. Paolo Poli passed away yesterday in Rome after a period of illness. He would have turned 87 in May. The mayor of Florence Dario Nardella, the city where he was born, wanted to define him by spreading the news of his death on twitter, presenting him as a versatile and free artist. The funeral will be in his city.
LIGHTNESS AND DEPTH
Paolo Poli was a master for a whole theater between variety and insight, full of irony, never the slightest shadow of bad taste in his disguises. He always remained a child – recalls Ansa in tracing the portrait that we take up again here – even when he was certainly beyond the age. We cannot separate him from that impertinent little voice of his famous reading and interpretation of Pinocchio, he, son of Collodi and unrepentant Tuscan even in his speech, as well as from the malice with which he told fairy tales for the little ones or famous novellas on the Radio in the seventies.
The figure for his future shows was already there, ranging from the great classics to romance literature for young ladies. Brilliant actor by vocation, with intelligent and provocative comedy, but always with a playful background, as in his famous "en travesti" appearances, Poli loved surreal texts, dreamlike sides, the ridicule of sentimentality, the quick sneer, the irony which also dismantles and reveals that underground melancholic and existential note of every true artist.
Born in 1928 in Florence, Paolo Poli had a degree in French literature with a thesis on Henry Beque and had started out working in the radio and in the vernacular theater, until he joined the Harlequin Stock Exchange founded by Aldo Trionfo in Genoa.
EPATER LES BOURGEOIS WITH SAINT RITA AND THE ENEMY
From there he will land in Rome, at the Cometa, with a show on Novellino in 1961, beginning his journey through literary texts of all kinds. Particular and spectacular sarcastic storyteller, he had his first moment of true glory with "Santa Rita of Cascia" in 1967, who scandalized and was accused of contempt of religion. Always looking for that paradoxical side of life, off and on the stage, Poli always made fun of everything, but it is an appearance, if, in order to always be able to do so with such certainty, it means that he knows how to take everything seriously first , with a certain critical criterion and a true sensitivity, so as to be able to pass from literature to life with the same attitude, for example by not hiding his homosexual nature, a serious thing, of course, but about which he joked with the same impertinence as all the rest . This is how he manages, naturally and in the company of Ida Ombroni, who wrote the texts of many famous shows with him, to go from Carolina Invernizio or Vispa Teresa to Savinio or Queneau, without forgetting some romantic heroes such as Alfieri.
And so exemplary, if you will, remains in the fateful 1969, his proposal of "La nemica" by Niccodemi his most famous show, with an en travesti' company of only men and giving life to a wild, Italian mother duchess all charms , effective gestures, who fan her armpits with a fan or provocatively nibble the poor ostrich boa, warbling wrapped in the flag, intoning all kinds of little voices and hysterical screams, which become a criticism from within, a ridicule of that bourgeois world at the turn of the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, which led the country to war and fascism without any conscience.
He had fun, dressed up, pulled out all the charms possible, at the end of each show improvising and almost conversing with the audience, like a blissful immoralist of ambiguity and the crisis of values, a beloved but solitary, unique provocateur, an exhibitionist who broke the hypocrites borders of respectability, always doing it even on his own skin.
Despite his age, energetic and irreverent, he had continued even after the age of 80 to frequent the stage, to create books - such as the Emons audio book in which he read for his part "Science in the kitchen and the art of eating well" by Pellegrino Artusi - and he was also back on TV last June after more than 40 years on Rai3 with "E let me entertain", 8 episodes together with his friend Pino Strabioli. He had been, as usual, a showman. ”My favorite sin? It's pride. What I can't stand, on the other hand, is sloth. The constant muttering of some people”.
