Edipus

Director, playwright, visual artist. His studies in art history with Roberto Salvini and Mina Gregori and his connections with artists and musicians proves decisive for his theatrical vocation. During the seventies of the twentieth century, he establishes himself among the leading exponents of the New Italian Theatre as a theatre director, making his mark on the Image Theatre and Post Avant-garde theatrical seasons. In the eighties, he begins to theorize and practice a form of poetry theatre aimed at combining dramaturgy of verse and stage writing. He then makes his opera directional debut in the early nineties with Norma by Vincenzo Bellini. From this moment on, his work on melodrama will develop in parallel with his direction of prose theatre. Throughout his career he has staged works by Aristophanes, Beckett, Bernhard, Brecht, Chekhov, D’Annunzio, Euripides, Forster, Luzi, Manzoni, Müller, Pasolini, Proust, Sophocles, Schnitzler, Shakespeare, Testori, and within the field of opera he has worked on Bizet, Corghi, Giordano, Mascagni, Massenet, Mozart, Pennisi, Puccini, Purcell, Rossini, Vacchi, Verdi, Wagner, Zandonai... In 2021, to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, he staged Mario Luzi’s Purgatory at the Grand Theatre in Pompeii. In 2023, he staged Euripides’ Medea at the Greek Theatre of Syracuse with a record attendance of over 100,000 spectators. In 2024 it is Racine’s Phaedra in the translation by Giovanni Raboni. Numerous, the awards received for his work both in theatre and opera.

Actor, playwright and writer. Under the direction of Federico Tiezzi, he has interpreted, among others, works by Aristophanes, Beckett, Bernhard, Brecht, D'Annunzio, Luzi, Pasolini, Pirandello and Schnitzler. His performances as Giovanni Testori, which have revolutionized the image of the Lombard writer, are of great importance. Between 1988 and 2002, he received four Ubu Awards for best male performance. He has made CD recordings of Poems by Pasolini and Dante's Inferno (Garzanti); The theatre of Giovanni Testori in the shows by Sandro Lombardi and Federico Tiezzi (Edizioni ERI); and Cleopatràs by Giovanni Testori. His most recent interpretations, unanimously appreciated, are Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard, 2020, Scenes from Faust by Johann W. Goethe and Purgatory by Mario Luzi, 2022. His first work as a director was that of Anna Della Rosa in Erodiàs + Mater strangosciàs, 2023. Between theatre, music and radio, he has worked, among others, with Furio Bordon, Arturo Cirillo, Giancarlo Cobelli, Rainer W. Fassbinder, Roberto Latini, Claudio Longhi, Mario Martone, Riccardo Muti, Giorgio Pressburgher, Carlo Quartucci, Pascal Rambert, Paolo Rosa, Giorgio Sangati, Fabrizio Sinisi, and Fabio Vacchi. He published Gi anni felici (The Happy Years), a coming-of-age novel, for Garzanti, Bagutta Prize, First Work 2004. His first novel, Le mani sull’amore (Hands on Love), was published in 2009, Feltrinelli. From 2015 Queste assolate tenebre (These Sunny Shadows), Lindau, on his work with Mario Luzi.

An actor, he graduated from the Piccolo Teatro School in Milan under the direction of Carmelo Rifici. His early collaborations saw him working with Ennio Coltorti, Claudio Autelli, Mario Baldini, and Paolo Bignamini. Between 2021 and 2022, he performed in Doppio Sogno, adapted from Schnitzler and directed by Rifici, as well as in M – Il Figlio del Secolo, based on Antonio Scurati’s novel and directed by Massimo Popolizio. In 2022, he also staged his first solo performance, Antonio – Vita di un Guitto. In May 2023, he took part in the site-specific production Il Fabbricone by Giovanni Testori, directed by Andrea Chiodi. That same year, he was selected for the prestigious two-year advanced training program Teatro Laboratorio della Toscana, directed by Federico Tiezzi, where he worked with renowned artists such as Sandro Lombardi, Roberto Latini, Francesca Della Monica, Monica Bacelli, Fabrizio Sinisi, and Cristiana Morganti.