Goodbye Glauco Mauri, a life for the theatre

The actor Glauco Mauri, an extraordinary face and interpreter of Italian theatre, has died. Seventy years of stages. Born in Pesaro in 1930, he would have turned 94 on October 1st. Having fallen ill a few days ago, he had given up going on stage with “De Profundis”, at the Vascello in Rome. A very long career, a life dedicated to art. His first leading role at fifteen, with an amateur company in his city.

In 1949 he entered the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome directed by Silvio D’Amico, among his teachers Orazio Costa, Wanda Capodaglio, Sergio Tofano, Mario Pelosini. He made his professional debut in 1953 in Shakespeare’s Macbeth directed by Orazio Costa. In the same year he was Sir Tobias in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night directed by Renato Castellani, and, directed by André Barsaq, he achieved great personal success in the role of Smerdjakov in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, the cast includes Memo Benassi , Lilla Brignone, Gianni Santuccio and Enrico Maria Salerno.

In 1981 Glauco Mauri with Roberto Sturno founded the Compagnia Glauco Mauri, which later became the Compagnia Mauri Sturno; Mister Puntila and his servant Matti by Bertolt Brecht, interpreted by them, directed by Egisto Marcucci, is the first show produced. In 40 years of uninterrupted activity, the Company has brought to the stage some of the most successful shows of Italian theatre, awarded numerous times with the “Golden Ticket Agis”, and many prizes have been awarded to Glauco Mauri and Roberto Sturno for their their artistic merits.

Among his over 40 productions are King Lear and The Tempest by Shakespeare, Oedipus the King – Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles, Faust by Goethe, Crime and Punishment and The Idiot by Dostoevsky, Henry IV and All for Good by Pirandello, The Liar by Goldoni , Don Giovanni by Molie’re, The Rhinoceros by Ionesco, Philoktet by Heiner Muller, A Life in the Theater by David Mamet and The Conversation Notebooks by Ludwig van Beethoven, written, performed and directed by Glauco Mauri.

In 1961 he founded with Valeria Moriconi, Franco Enriquez, Emanuele Luzzati – they were later joined by Mario Scaccia – the Compagnia dei Quattro, an artistic group that represented an innovative and significant force in the Italian theater panorama. Directed by Franco Enriquez, Bèrenger is in the first Italian performance of Il Rinoceronte by Eugéne Jonesco. Thus wrote Dario Del Corno, friend and collaborator of Glauco Mauri and Roberto Sturno in the translation and adaptation of many texts staged together, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the company: “Sophocles, Shakespeare, Moliére, Goethe, Pirandello, Beckett: peaks of theater of every time and country, and as many cornerstones – he stated, summarizing the great value of the doyen of Italian theater – of the activity of Glauco Mauri and his Company, in the many seasons that have now passed since 1981, when Mauri decided to travel its own independent road.

As an actor and director he was established and sought after by every theatre; What drove him to take the risky and uncomfortable path of economic and managerial responsibility, in such a difficult time for theatrical life? The answer can be drawn from the results of this long experience themselves: what stimulated Mauri’s theatrical passion towards the new organization of his activity was nothing other than an exhausted search for the poetic quality of the show, combined with the awareness that only the total independence of the structures and of the choices he could have guaranteed the freedom of artistic intentions”. With the Company of Four he brings to the stage Shakespeare, Beckett, Pasolini, Marlowe-Brecht, Del Buono, Codignola, Garcia Lorca; their edition of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew is famous staged in Italy and various European cities.

Since 1965, after the dissolution of the Compagnia dei Quattro, he has worked mainly for the Stabili di Torino, Genova, Bologna, and collaborates with the major Italian directors: Luigi Squarzina, Giorgio Strehler, Mario Missiroli, Aldo Trionfo to name just a few. Directed by Luca Ronconi (1972) he is the protagonist in Aeschylus’ Oresteia at the Bitef in Belgrade, at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the Venice Biennale. The most beloved authors: Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Beckett, and the first Italian Krapp of Krapp’s Last Tape (1961), and the first to bring Act Without Words to Italy (1962).

In 1974 he wrote, performed and directed Ludwig van Beethoven’s Conversation Notebooks. The show then resumed in the 1994/1995 season for 154 performances. In 1981 he founded the Glauco Mauri Company with Roberto Sturno, which later became Mauri-Sturno. Mister Puntila and his servant Matti by Bertolt Brecht, directed by Egisto Marcucci, is the first show produced. He starred in and directed: Oedipus Rex – Oedipus at Colonus (1982), Philoctetes by Sophocles and Philoktet by Heiner Muller (1983), King Lear (1984) and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1988). In 1983 he was Ivan in Prokofiev’s Ivan the Terrible directed by Yurij Ahronovitch in Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome. No

In 1985, directed by Marco Sciaccaluga, he played Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. In 1986 he staged Faust (Part I and II) by Goethe, and Kings, Jesters and Love, an Evening with William Shakespeare, a show based on sixteenth-century songs and excerpts from the English playwright’s sonnets. He is the performer and director of A Life in the Theater by David Mamet and Swan Song by Anton Chekhov, two one-act plays collected in a single show (1987), of Don Giovanni by Molie’re (1989), of From silence to silence, acts unique by Beckett. In 1991 he directed Skakespeare’s Richard II, and in 1993 Didtoevskij’s The Idiot, the protagonist of the two shows being Roberto Sturno. In February 1993 he participated with Roberto Sturno and the pianist Michele Campanella in an evening of melodies at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. He is Martino Lori in Tutto per bene by Luigi Pirandello directed by Guido De Monticelli, the show, on tour from July 1991 to February 1994, totaled 316 performances in 93 Italian cities. In 1995 he re-staged and interpreted Oedipus Rex – Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles, which totaled 304 performances in two consecutive seasons. In 1996 he inaugurated the opera season of the Comunale di Treviso as director of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth under the direction of Donato Renzetti.

In the role of Prospero, and with Sturno in the role of Caliban, he stages Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which from August 1995 to February 1998 was performed 323 times in the major Italian theatres. With King Lear (1985), Faust (1986), Edipo Re – Edipo a Colono (1996), the Mauri-Sturno company won the “Agis Golden Ticket”, an award given to the most watched prose show of the year.

Since his professional debut in 1953, he has always participated in all theater seasons, acting several times in classical shows at the Greek Theater of Syracuse, at the Roman Theater of Verona, and then at the Spoleto, Benevento and Asti Festivals. He played 24 different Shakespearean roles, among others Shylock, Prospero, Petruchio, Macbeth, King Lear, Richard II, Richard III, Titus Andronicus, Bottom.

In 1997 he was Artistic Director for the 51st season of classical performances of the Autumn Festival of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. In the cinematographic field, he was the main actor in La Cina è Neighbor by Marco Bellocchio (1967), and took part in the films La Costanza della Ragione by Pasquale Festa Campanile (1964), The Guest by Liliana Cavani (1971), Profondo Rosso by Dario Argento (1975), Ecce Bombo by Nanni Moretti (1978). On television he was among the protagonists of the golden age of the great dramas broadcast by Rai, among his many participations to remember the great personal success with Dostoevsky’s Demons, Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks and with Coralba; He also participated in numerous radio productions.

In 1998 he played Pirandello’s Henry IV directed by Maurizio Scaparro, and was still the director of Verdi’s Macbeth conducted by Gustav Khunn at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. In the 1998/99 season he directed Euge’ne Ionesco’s Il Rinoceronte, in which he played the role of Jean while the protagonist Bèrenger was Roberto Sturno. In 1999, after fifteen years, he tackled Shakespeare’s King Lear for the second time as director and protagonist. In 2000 he staged, with great success, Enigmatic Variations, a contemporary text by the Frenchman Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt.

In the following years he directed and performed Volpone by Ben Jonson (2002), The Liar by Carlo Goldoni (2003), Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky (2005-2007), performed 271 times, and in 2007 a new staging of Faust by Goethe, on tour until 2009. In 2008 he adapted and staged The Gospel according to Pilate based on the successful book by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. In 2010 he directed Sleuth by Anthony Shaffer; these last two shows, with Roberto Sturno as co-protagonist, remained on the Italian stage until 2011. In the following two seasons he was Papa Briquet in The One Who Takes the Slaps, his direction and the free version taken from the play of the same name by Leonid N Andreev.

In 2012, together with Roberto Sturno, he brought to Italian theaters From Krapp to Senza parole, four one-act plays by Samuel Beckett preceded by The Prologue, a quotation of Beckett’s jokes and observations on life and theatre. In 2014, he starred with Roberto Sturno in Una pure formalità, both the direction and the theatrical version based on the film by Giuseppe Tornatore. In recent years with the Mauri Sturno Company he has produced Enigmatic Variations and the Gospel according to Pilate by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Sleuth by Antony Shaffer, The One Who Takes the Slap by Leonid N. Andreev, From Krapp to Speechless, collection of one-act plays by Beckett, A pure formality, from Giuseppe Tornatore’s film, Four funny stories, which groups together the one-act plays: Cece’ and Pirandello’s Driving License, The Marriage Question and Chekhov’s Tobacco Hurts.