Directing is a lonesome trade, yet one in which one can only operate through the mediation of others, with one’s work then becoming the property of others. Zeffirelli once confided in me: “I’m myself only when I draw” In fact, I’ve always envied my wife, Desideria, who’s an illustrator, a brilliant illustrator.

From my distant past I salvage three things: drawing, writing (even, so they said, remarkable essays) and our theatre-making in my elementary school. Against the grain, I went to grammar-school, a school for classical studies, where I stopped writing and I stopped drawing. Fortunately, the philosophy teacher showed me the importance of method and of organized thought and in the end I overcame the test of direct translation from Latin and Greek. I even passed for something of an intellectual, but I see myself as essentially an artisan, an artisan of sensibility. Now for the theatre!

My working life is contained in three folders:
Things I should have done .Things I’ve done and am doing. Things I aim to do, shall do or am about to do. However, the exact contents of the last folder are largely still a mystery to me.

I should…have been an architect if I had understood where the nought should go.

I would have preferred… film-directing, since films have always been the love of my life.

I should, in 1976… have stayed in the States when I was on tour there with the Scala. However, these were all near misses.

I have been… a messenger, a picture-framer, a stage technician, stage manager and assistant producer and director for years… furthermore something of an actor… finally a director in the straight theatre, for radio, for television and in the

opera house. I have also been a family man and a teacher of theatre. Not necessarily in the order of presentation.

First came the Theatre School of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, today re-baptised in the name of Paolo Grassi, and with it a sole, splendid teacher called Checco Rissone. On stage he could do anything and everything; he taught me all I needed to know in a few months. The rest comes with years of experience: waiting, making mistakes and accepting corrections, meeting important and stimulating people, even negatively so. Then comes curiosity towards disciplines not directly connected with the theatre or show- business. A taste for research. Culture in general, in other words.

Il mio babbino caro wanted me to take a degree, so, behold! Matriculation number 187 in the DAMS course at Bologna University. Every now and then I go to the exam sessions and present a dissertation on my new profession, that of assistant producer at the Scala. This always produced excellent gradings. However the exam I’m most proud of is in History of Architecture: three hours and 30 cum laude. My thesis is on science-fiction in cinema. I no longer remember exactly when I got my degree.

Under the yoke of the Scala. Until 1979 the world of cinema dominated all my thoughts of work. I considered the theatre, and especially tha Scala, a transitory phase of apprenticeship. As indeed it was. I worked with a procession of directors/producers of all kinds. I remember… Strehler shouting his head off: overbearing but a genius; he only needed a cushion to improvise with.