The Simoni Prize, now in its 66th edition, after two excellent names such as Massimo De Francovich and Franco Branciaroli, this year pays homage to a great actress:Elisabetta Pozzi. AGI learns this in advance.
The awards ceremony will take place on Thursday 4 July, as per tradition on the stage of the Roman Theater in Verona, at 9pm, before the show “Hamlet”. A national premiere that inaugurates the 2024 Shakespearean festival, starring Francesco Montanari alongside Franco Branciaroli, who received this prestigious award just last year.
This was decided by the jury, chaired by the Mayor of Verona Damiano Tommasi and composed of theater critics Claudia Cannella, Roberto Canziani, Masolino D’Amico, Rodolfo Di Giammarco and Katia Ippaso with this motivation: “In the year in which we celebrate one hundred years since the death of Eleonora Duse, the jury decides to award the Renato Simoni prize for a life for the theater to Elisabetta Pozzi, a great actress of our scene who has been able to maintain, over time, with a grace and brightness all her own, a quality that has always very high level of expression and a total adherence to the life of the character that she was called upon to interpret from time to time. Her repertoire has no boundaries of either genre or language: from Shakespeare to Pirandello, from Greek tragedy to contemporary foreign and Italian dramaturgy, Elisabetta Pozzi has always delved into the folds of the text, making it resonate with her voice and her intelligence. scenic, not just his part, but the subtle textures of the entire score”.
“Moved, honored and grateful”
“I am moved, honored and grateful for this award. Loyalty to the theatre: I cannot deny it. An absolute loyalty, matured from the awareness that living in the theater and for the theater has always been necessary and vital for me. It has allowed me to free myself from weight of myself and to experience abandonment to the universe of myth, dream and creation. How can I not remain faithful to the theatre?”. These are the first words of Elisabetta Pozzi, awarded with the Simoni Prize, now in its 66th edition.
The career of Elisabetta Pozzi
Trained at the theater school of Genoa, Elisabetta Pozzi began acting as a teenager, playing small roles in various shows, until her debut, alongside Giorgio Albertazzi who chose her as the protagonist, in “Il fu Mattia Pascal”, a play based on the homonymous novel by Luigi Pirandello.
For her performances she was awarded four Ubu Awards, two critics’ awards and the Eleonora Duse Award. For the cinema she plays various films including “Cursed on the day I met you” by Carlo Verdone thanks to which she received a David di Donatello in 1992 for best supporting actress. An award-winning actress much loved by audiences and critics, both as an interpreter of the great classics and masterpieces of contemporary drama, Elisabetta Pozzi has been directed by the most important European directors, from Luca Ronconi to Peter Stein.