Zeffirelli, Franco (real name, Gian Franco Corsi)

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Zeffirelli, Franco (real name, Gian Franco Corsi)

Zeffirelli, Franco (real name, Gian Franco Corsi) , prominent Italian opera director and designer; b. Florence, Feb. 12,1923. He began his career as an actor, and then became an assistant to Visconti. His first operatic production was La Cenerentola at Milan’s La Scala (1953). In 1958 he mounted La Traviata in Dallas, and in 1959 Lucia di Lammermoor at London’s Covent Garden, where he later produced Falstaff”(1961), Alcina and Don Giovanni (1962), and Tosca. He also worked at the Metropolitan Opera in N.Y., where he was chosen to produce Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra as the opening work at the new house at Lincoln Center in 1966. In later years, he devoted himself to operatic film productions, winning particular acclaim for his filming of La Traviata (1983) and Otello (1986); he also brought out the film biography The Young Toscanini (1988).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire