He was born in Florence 96 years ago, he died in his home in Rome: Franco Zeffirelli died, director, screenwriter and film and theater actor, as well as a senator for two legislatures, in the ranks of Forza Italia. “The disappearance – reads the website of the Zeffirelli Foundation, which broke the news – occurred at the end of a long illness. Further information on the place and date of the funeral will follow. The Maestro will rest in the cemetery of the Porte Sante in Florence". In his career has often brought the great classics of literature to the stage and the big screen, such as Romeo and Juliet, a 1968 film that earned him an Oscar nomination for best director, and La Traviata, for which he was nominated for an award for screenplay.
He had an admiration for the opera singer Maria Callas, to whom he dedicated several works including a documentary in the 60s and, towards the end of his career, in 2002, a successful film called Callas Forever. Among the most famous Italian directors in the world (his films are almost all international productions and in 2004 Queen Elizabeth II also appointed him Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire), Franco Zeffirelli as a film director it is characterized by formal elegance and attention to melodrama and love stories, developed with a sense of the show and precious figurative taste. In private life Zeffirelli was openly homosexual (he had a relationship with his colleague Luchino Visconti), Catholic in orientation and a great fan of Fiorentina.
Among the very few authors who matured in the 1994s who did not have a left-wing political background, he was elected senator in the ranks of Forza Italia in XNUMX. The operas directed by him have been performed all over the world, from Oman to the United States , only the New York Metropolitan staged 800 of his shows. The last prize, the Fiorino, was awarded to him in 2013 by the then mayor of Florence Matteo Renzi, after Zeffirelli had refused it for years, in controversy with the non-awarding to Oriana Fallaci.
