Famous Playwrights from Italy
Alojz Rebula
Alojz Rebula (June 21, 1924 – October 23, 2018) was a Slovene writer, playwright, essayist, and translator, and a prominent member of the Slovene minority in Italy. He lived and worked in Villa Opicina in the Province of Trieste, Italy. He was a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.- Age: 100
- Birthplace: Duino-Aurisina, Italy
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Antonio Porta (the pen-name of Leo Paolazzi) was an author and poet and one of the founders of the Italian literary movement Gruppo 63.- Age: Dec. at 53 (1935-1989)
- Birthplace: Vicenza, Italy
Antonio Somma
Antonio Somma (28 August 1809, Udine – 8 August 1864, Venice) was an Italian playwright who is most well known for writing the libretto of an opera which ultimately became Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera in 1859. While a student, his tragedy, Parisina, gave him quite a success. Initially, his contact with Verdi came about when the composer was seeking to continue work on his proposed Re Lear, an adaptation of the Shakespeare play, King Lear, for the opera stage which had begun under his long-time collaborator Salvadore Cammarano who had died. Under Verdi's supervision, Somma wrote the libretto for Re Lear, a project that Verdi never realised musically although extensive work was done and a full libretto completed to the point where Verdi was considering this to be the opera he wrote for Naples for the 1858 season.However, Ballo had a troubled history and, originally, Somma wrote the libretto under the title of Gustavo III. As a result of required changes by, firstly, the Bourbon censors and, then, the Papal ones, it became transformed into Un vendetta in domino (with a different setting and characters' names).Finally, for its Rome premiere, the opera became Un ballo in maschera, but with another location change (this time to Boston in colonial times) and further title and name changes. Overall, Somma then specialized in stage plays and wrote no further libretti.- Age: Dec. at 154 (1809-1964)
- Birthplace: Udine, Italy
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Carlo Bertolazzi
Carlo Bertolazzi was a playwright and a screenwriter.- Age: Dec. at 45 (1870-1916)
- Birthplace: Rivolta d'Adda, Italy
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Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni (, also US: , Italian: [ˈkarlo oˈzvaldo ɡolˈdoːni]; 25 February 1707 – 6 February 1793) was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty. His plays offered his contemporaries images of themselves, often dramatizing the lives, values, and conflicts of the emerging middle classes. Though he wrote in French and Italian, his plays make rich use of the Venetian language, regional vernacular, and colloquialisms. Goldoni also wrote under the pen name and title Polisseno Fegeio, Pastor Arcade, which he claimed in his memoirs the "Arcadians of Rome" bestowed on him.One of his best known works is the comic play Servant of Two Masters, which has been translated and adapted internationally numerous times. In 1966 it was adapted into an opera buffa by the American composer Vittorio Giannini. In 2011, Richard Bean adapted the play for the National Theatre of Great Britain as One Man, Two Guvnors. Its popularity led to a transfer to the West End and in 2012 to Broadway.- Age: Dec. at 85 (1707-1793)
- Birthplace: Venice, Italy
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- Charles Messina (born October 21, 1971 in Greenwich Village, New York) is an American playwright, screenwriter, director, and co-founder of NahNotOutsideMyHouse! Productions. He is of Italian-American descent. He attended Xavier High School and then later, New York University.
- Age: 53
- Birthplace: Greenwich Village, New York City, New York
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Dario Fo (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdaːrjo ˈfɔ]; 24 March 1926 – 13 October 2016) was an Italian actor, playwright, comedian, singer, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, painter, political campaigner for the Italian left wing and the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. In his time he was "arguably the most widely performed contemporary playwright in world theatre". Much of his dramatic work depends on improvisation and comprises the recovery of "illegitimate" forms of theatre, such as those performed by giullari (medieval strolling players) and, more famously, the ancient Italian style of commedia dell'arte.His plays have been translated into 30 languages and performed across the world, including in Argentina, Chile, Iran, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka Sweden, the UK and Yugoslavia. His work of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s is peppered with criticisms of assassinations, corruption, organised crime, racism, Roman Catholic theology and war. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, he took to lampooning Forza Italia and its leader Silvio Berlusconi, while his targets of the 2010s included the banks amid the European sovereign-debt crisis. Also in the 2010s, he became the main ideologue of the Five Star Movement, the anti-establishment party led by Beppe Grillo, often referred to by its members as "the Master".Fo's solo pièce célèbre, titled Mistero Buffo and performed across Europe, Canada and Latin America over a 30-year period, is recognised as one of the most controversial and popular spectacles in postwar European theatre and has been denounced by the Vatican (more precisely, by Cardinal Ugo Poletti, not, strictly speaking, a Vatican official but Cardinal Vicar for the Diocese of Rome) as "the most blasphemous show in the history of television". The title of the original English translation of Non Si Paga! Non Si Paga! (Can't Pay? Won't Pay!) has passed into the English language. "The play captures something universal in actions and reactions of the working class."His receipt of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature marked the "international acknowledgment of Fo as a major figure in twentieth-century world theatre". The Swedish Academy praised Fo as a writer "who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden". He owned and operated a theatre company. Fo was an atheist.- Age: 98
- Birthplace: Sangiano, Italy
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Diego Fabbri (b1911) was an Italian playwright whose plays centered on religious (Catholic) themes.- Age: Dec. at 69 (1911-1980)
- Birthplace: Forlì, Italy
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- Ennio Flaiano (5 March 1910 – 20 November 1972) was an Italian screenwriter, playwright, novelist, journalist, and drama critic. Best known for his work with Federico Fellini, Flaiano co-wrote ten screenplays with the Italian director, including La Strada (1954), La Dolce Vita (1960), and 8½.
- Age: Dec. at 62 (1910-1972)
- Birthplace: Pescara, Italy
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Ermete Novelli (5 March 1851 – 30 January 1919) was an Italian actor and playwright. Born in Lucca, the son of a prompter, Novelli made his first appearance in 1866, and played character and leading comedy parts in the best companies between 1871 and 1884. By 1885 he had his own company, and made a great success in Paris in 1898 and 1902. He established in Rome in 1900 a new theatre, the Casa di Goldoni, on the lines of the Comédie-Française. He dramatized Émile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq, and alone or in collaboration wrote several comedies and many monologues. He appeared in a number of early silent films. He died in Naples in 1919, aged 67, survived by at least one child, his son, Enrico "Yambo" Novelli.- Age: Dec. at 67 (1851-1919)
- Birthplace: Lucca, Italy
- Franco Mannino (25 April 1924 – 1 February 2005) was an Italian film composer, pianist, opera director, playwright and novelist, born in Palermo. He made his debut as pianist at the age of 16. He conducted the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Canada between 1982 and 1986, among the others. In all he wrote more than 440 compositions including opera, ballet, oratorios, symphonies, chamber music and music for the theatre. In addition there was his music for more than a hundred films by some of the best-known directors of his day, including Luchino Visconti with whom he collaborated many times, including such films as Death in Venice. His 1963 opera Il diavolo in giardino, from a libretto by Visconti (and collaborators) based on a Thomas Mann short story, was presented at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo in February. Another of his works, which Visconti directed, was the ballet Mario e il Mago in 1956. He died in Rome in 2005.
- Age: Dec. at 80 (1924-2005)
- Birthplace: Palermo, Italy
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General Gabriele D'Annunzio, Prince of Montenevoso, Duke of Gallese (UK: , US: , Italian: [ɡabriˈɛːle danˈnuntsjo]; 12 March 1863 – 1 March 1938), sometimes spelled d'Annunzio, was an Italian poet, journalist, playwright and soldier during World War I. He occupied a prominent place in Italian literature from 1889 to 1910 and later political life from 1914 to 1924. He was often referred to under the epithets Il Vate ("the Poet") or Il Profeta ("the Prophet"). D'Annunzio was associated with the Decadent movement in his literary works, which interplayed closely with French Symbolism and British Aestheticism. Such works represented a turn against the naturalism of the preceding romantics and was both sensuous and mystical. He came under the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche which would find outlets in his literary and later political contributions. His affairs with several women, including Eleonora Duse and Luisa Casati, received public attention. During the First World War, perception of D'Annunzio in Italy transformed from literary figure into a national war hero. He was associated with the elite Arditi storm troops of the Italian Army and took part in actions such as the Flight over Vienna. As part of an Italian nationalist reaction against the Paris Peace Conference, he set up the short-lived Italian Regency of Carnaro in Fiume with himself as Duce. The constitution made "music" the fundamental principle of the state and was corporatist in nature. Though D'Annunzio never declared himself a fascist, he has been described as the forerunner of Italian fascism as his ideas and aesthetics influenced it and the style of Benito Mussolini.- Age: Dec. at 74 (1863-1938)
- Birthplace: Pescara, Italy
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Giacinto Andrea Cicognini
Giacinto Andrea Cicognini (1606–1651) was an Italian playwright and librettist, the son of poet and playwright Jacopo Cicognini. Cicognini was born in Florence. In 1627, he graduated from the University of Pisa, and he lived in Florence from 1640 to 1645 where he had legal advice to the poet and playwright Giambattista Ricciardi. In 1646 he wrote his first libretto, Il Celio, which was set to music by Sapiti and Baglioni. Later that year he went to Venice, where he began work as the secretary of Francesco Boldieri, a nobleman who handled the property of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem. His fame began to grow, as both playwright and librettist, and his output of plays, tragedies, comedies, and librettos was almost all for theatres and opera houses in Venice. His works were set to music by some of the most famous composers of the day, including Francesco Cavalli, Antonio Cesti, Barbara Strozzi, and Francesco Lucio. He died in Venice. Cicognini was one of the most important figures in seventeenth-century opera, where he brought together elements of tragedy and comedy, and often shows signs of Spanish influence. His most famous works are Giasone (set to music by Cavalli, 1649) and Orontea (set to music by Lucio, 1649 and Cesti, 1656), which were to become the two most popular operas in 17th century Europe.- Age: Dec. at 45 (1606-1651)
- Birthplace: Italy
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Giorgio van Straten (born 1955) is an Italian writer and manager of arts organizations. His first novel Generazione was published in 1987. In 2000 he won four literary prizes for Il mio nome a memoria, published in English as My Name, A Living Memory (2003), the story of his Jewish-Dutch family from 1811 to our days. That same year he was awarded the Grand Official Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.He translated from English into Italian The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (Giunti, 1992),The Call of the Wild by Jack London (Giunti, 1994),The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (Giunti, 1995) and The Pavilion on the dunes of Robert Louis Stevenson (The Unit, 1997). He is one of the directors of the Italian literary magazine Nuovi Argomenti. For musical theater he wrote Tre voci for voice, string orchestra, percussion and tape, music by Giorgio Battistelli, commissioned by the Sagra Musicale Umbra (First performance: Assisi, 1996); Auf den Marmorklippen (On the Marble Cliffs), from the novel by Ernst Jünger, music by Giorgio Battistelli (First performance: National Theatre, Mannheim, 2002); Open Air, music of Andrea Molino, commissioned by the Società Aquilana dei Concerti (First performance: L'Aquila, 2012); Here there is no why, multimedia music theater project by Andrea Molino (first performance at the Teatro Comunale, Bologna, 2014). From 1985 to 2002 van Straten was the chairman of the Orchestra della Toscana. From 1997 to 2002 he was on the Board of Directors of the Biennale di Venezia and 1998 to 2002 he also served as president of AGIS, the Italian association for the performing arts. From 2002 to 2005 he was general director of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. From 2005 to 2008 he managed Palazzo delle Esposizioni e Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome. From 2009 to 2012 he was on the board of directors of the RAI. Since 2015 he is the director of the Italian Cultural Institute in New York.- Age: 70
- Birthplace: Florence, Italy
- Giovacchino Forzano (Italian pronunciation: [dʒovakˈkino forˈtsano]; 19 November 1884 – 28 October 1970) was an Italian playwright, librettist, stage director, and film director. A resourceful writer, he authored numerous popular plays and produced opera librettos for most of the major Italian composers of the early twentieth century, including the librettos for Giacomo Puccini's Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi.
- Age: Dec. at 86 (1883-1970)
- Birthplace: Borgo San Lorenzo, Italy
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Giovanni de Gamerra (26 December 1742 – 29 August 1803) was an Italian cleric, a playwright, and a poet. He is best known as a prolific librettist. Gamerra was born in Livorno, and worked from 1771 at the Teatro Regio Ducal in Milan – an important centre for opera at the time. Operas based on his librettos include Sarti's Medonte, re di Epiro and Josef Mysliveček's Il Medonte, Paisiello's Pirro, several operas by Antonio Salieri and Mozart's Lucio Silla (though this libretto was modified by Metastasio). His Erifile was set by several composers. De Gamerra is also said to have been the first translator of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte into Italian. His librettos are in the grand, orderly tradition of Metastasio, but incorporate progressive elements with enhanced use of chorus, ballet, and elaborate scenery. In 1793, aided by his reputation as a protégé of Metastasio, he was appointed as court librettist in Vienna, and he took to combining comic and serious features to please Viennese taste. De Gamerra was politically active, and by his revolutionary attitudes incurred the wrath of Emperor Leopold II, who tried unsuccessfully to block his career. He died at Vicenza.- Age: Dec. at 60 (1742-1803)
- Birthplace: Livorno, Italy
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Giovanni Testori
Giovanni Testori (Novate Milanese 12 May 1923 – Milan 16 March 1993) was an Italian writer, playwright, art historian and literary critic. His literary works are characterised by linguistic experimentalism, featuring both lexicon and syntax that mix and fuse elements of the Lombard dialect with French and English. Religion is present in his oeuvre as a tragic tension to transcendence, marked by doubt, blasphemy and repentance.- Age: Dec. at 69 (1923-1993)
- Birthplace: Novate Milanese, Italy
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Giuseppe Bertolucci was an Italian film director and screenwriter. He directed 26 films between 1972 and 2012. He was the younger brother of Bernardo Bertolucci.- Age: Dec. at 65 (1947-2012)
- Birthplace: Parma, Italy
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Giuseppe Giacosa (21 October 1847 – 1 September 1906) was an Italian poet, playwright and librettist.- Age: Dec. at 58 (1847-1906)
- Birthplace: Colleretto Giacosa, Italy
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Leone de' Sommi
Leone de' Sommi Portaleone (Yehuda ben Yitzchak Somi Misha'ar Aryeh; Hebrew: יהודה בן יצחק סומי משער אריה - Judah son of Isaac Somi Portaleone; also Leone Ebreo de Somi and Yehuda Sommo; c. 1525 – c. 1590) was a Jewish-Italian playwright, director, actor, poet, translator, and treatiser. He lived most of his life in the northern Italian city of Mantua, until his death in the late 16th century. He had the fortune to live at Mantua during the apogee of its Renaissance cultural flowering, under the rule of the Gonzaga dynasty. This period was also one of relative peace and well-being for the Jewish community of Mantua, which blossomed from a mere 200 souls in 1500 to a population of 2,000 at the beginning of the 17th century. However, by 1650, a series of catastrophes had cut this number is half, and reduced the remaining Jewish-Mantuan community to poverty. Leone was a member of the renowned Portaleone family, which boasted many famous doctors and scientists. He, however, was the first of his family to garner literary fame, as the author of some 15 plays, most of them written in Italian, as well as poetry, and even a comedy, written in Hebrew, A Comedy of Betrothal (צחות בדיחותא דקידושין) the earliest surviving work of its kind in the Hebrew language. He is now most remembered for having written the first ever treatise on the art of stage direction, which defines a precise methodology of play production, from the selection of a text through its performance. This work, entitled, Four Dialogues on Scenic Representation ("Quattro dialoghi in materia di rappresentazioni sceniche"), takes the form of four conversations, between Veridico, a tailor/playwright/director, who acts as the voice of the author, and two curious gentlemen, Santino and Massimiano, who ask Veridico various questions about the theory and practice of the theater. This work marks a major milestone in the modernization of the theater from the unsophisticated days of the Middle Ages, and it also supplies valuable information on how theatrical spectacles were conceived and performed at this point during the Italian Renaissance. De' Sommi wrote most of his plays in poetry in the service of the Gonzaga dukes, and eventually became a member of the prestigious Accademia degli Invaghiti, from which Jews were technically barred. He wrote and directed many of the plays which the Jewish community were obliged to perform for the duchal court every year at the Carnival celebrations. Unfortunately, almost all of his works were lost in a fire at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino, in which sixteen volumes of manuscripts of his work were destroyed. The only works of de' Sommi which survive to this day are the aforementioned Hebrew comedy, the Four Dialogues, a comedy and a pastoral work written in Italian, and a poem in defense of women, entitled Shield of Women (Hebrew: מגן נשים), which consists of alternate lines in Hebrew and Italian.- Photo:
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Luigi Chiarelli (7 July 1880 – 20 December 1947) was an Italian playwright, theatre critic, and writer of short stories who is chiefly known as a founder of the teatro grottesco, or Theatre of the Grotesque, after the subtitle of one of his plays.- Age: Dec. at 67 (1880-1947)
- Birthplace: Trani, Italy
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Luigi Pirandello (Italian: [luˈiːdʒi piranˈdɛllo]; 28 June 1867 – 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer whose greatest contributions were his plays. He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his almost magical power to turn psychological analysis into good theatre." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd.- Age: Dec. at 69 (1867-1936)
- Birthplace: Agrigento, Italy
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Effectively cast as both amiable heroes and imposing figures of evil, Italian-born actor Nick Mancuso established himself as a new and valuable performer on stage in productions put on by the Stratford Festival and the Toronto Free Theater. He made his Hollywood motion picture debut in the horror outing "Nightwing" (1979), which proved to be a failure, but Mancuso quickly bounced back with one of his finest performances in "Ticket to Heaven" (1981) as a downtrodden man seduced into joining a cult. From that point onward, he alternated between working in the United States and Canada, including the fondly remembered "Stingray" (NBC, 1985) and its short-lived series offshoot, and such major studio pictures as "Under Siege" (1992) and "Rapid Fire" (1992). Moving back and forth from lead roles to more character-oriented assignments, Mancuso's dark good looks and multilingual abilities also made him the perfect choice to play different ethnicities. Although he was rarely at a loss for employment, Mancuso launched a new career path later in life as an enthusiastic advocate for healthy life choices and homeopathic alternatives to conventional medication. While never a bona fide star by Hollywood standards, Mancuso commanded a great deal respect amongst both his peers and the public for an impressively lengthy and varied acting history in three mediums.- Age: 76
- Birthplace: Mammola, Calabria, Italy
Pietro Chiari
Pietro Chiari (Italian pronunciation: [ˈpjɛːtro ˈkjaːri]; 25 December 1712 – 31 August 1785) was an Italian catholic priest, playwright, novelist and librettist.- Age: Dec. at 72 (1712-1785)
- Birthplace: Brescia, Italy
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Pietro De Silva
Pietro De Silva is an actor.- Age: 60
- Birthplace: Rome, Italy
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- Renato Simoni (Verona, 5 September 1875 – Milan, 5 July 1952) was an Italian journalist, playwright, writer and theatrical critic noted for his collaboration work with Giuseppe Adami for Giacomo Puccini's Turandot. Simoni's career was entirely devoted to theater. His first job was as an editor and a critic at L'Adige, a local Veronese newspaper company in his hometown. In 1902, he wrote one of his best comedies, La Vedova, followed by Carlo Gozzi (1903), Tramondo (1906), Congedo (1910) and Il matrimonio di Casanova.In 1914, he succeeded John Pozza as an author and critic at Corriere della Sera newspaper. He worked for the company until the end of his life. He also held a position as a director for a weekly magazine, La Tradotta. All his writings and critics were collected in volumes by Lucio Ridenti in 1951 under the title Trent'anni di cronaca drammatica and was published in 1960. In 1952, Simoni donated 40,000 volumes of his writings and reviews to the Museum of La Scala and dedicated them to his mother, Livia. The museum library was named Biblioteca Livia Simoni after his mother. Simoni died in Milan in 1952 and is buried at the city's Monumental Cemetery.
- Age: Dec. at 76 (1875-1952)
- Birthplace: Verona, Italy
Roberto Bracco
Roberto Bracco is a writer.- Age: Dec. at 81 (1861-1943)
- Birthplace: Naples, Italy
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Ruggero Cappuccio
Ruggero Cappuccio (born January 19, 1964) is an Italian playwright. He was born in Torre del Greco.- Age: 61
- Birthplace: Italy
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Salvadore Cammarano (also Salvatore) (born Naples, 19 March 1801 – died Naples 17 July 1852) was a prolific Italian librettist and playwright perhaps best known for writing the text of Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) for Gaetano Donizetti. For Donizetti he also contributed the libretti for L'assedio di Calais (1836), Belisario (1836), Pia de' Tolomei (1837), Roberto Devereux (1837), Maria de Rudenz (1838), Poliuto (1838), and Maria di Rohan (1843), while for Giuseppe Persiani he was the author of Ines de Castro. For Verdi he wrote Alzira (1845), La battaglia di Legnano (1849) and Luisa Miller (1849), but after he died in July 1852, Verdi worked with Leone Emanuele Bardare to complete the libretto for Il trovatore (1853). Cammarano also started work on libretto for a proposed adaptation of William Shakespeare's play King Lear, named Re Lear, but he died before completing it; a detailed scenario survives. His father, Giuseppe, was a painter and set-designer. His son, Michele, was also a painter.- Age: Dec. at 51 (1801-1852)
- Birthplace: Naples, Italy
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Sem Benelli
Sem Benelli (August 10, 1877 – December 18, 1949) was an Italian playwright, essayist and librettist. He provided the texts for several noted Italian operas, including Italo Montemezzi's L'amore dei tre re and L'incantesimo, and Umberto Giordano's La cena delle beffe, based on Benelli's own play of the same title. He was a native of Prato. The play The Jester's Supper was a great New York theatre success in 1919 under the title The Jest, starring Lionel and John Barrymore. In Italy Paola Pezzaglia was considered the best male protagonist of La cena delle beffe, after an incident in 1913 when the leading man collapsed before playing the character of Giannetto; she took his place achieving resounding success. Ever since Pezzaglia carried on doing the same role again and again. He wrote the screenplay for the 1942 film The Jester's Supper based on his own famous play.- Age: Dec. at 72 (1877-1949)
- Birthplace: Prato, Italy
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Tullio Kezich
Tullio Kezich (17 September 1928 in Trieste – 17 August 2009 in Rome) was an Italian screenwriter and playwright, best known as the film critic for Corriere della Sera and for his award-winning biography of Italian director Federico Fellini.- Age: Dec. at 80 (1928-2009)
- Birthplace: Trieste, Italy
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