Romolo Valli (Reggio Emilia, February 7, 1925 - Rome, February 1, 1980) was an Italian actor. He won three
Nastri d'Argento for Best Supporting Actor.
Partner Giorgio De Lullo
Queer Places:
Cimitero Monumentale di Reggio Emilia
Reggio Emilia, Provincia di Reggio Emilia, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
Romolo Valli (Reggio Emilia, February 7, 1925 - Rome, February 1, 1980) was an Italian actor. He won three
Nastri d'Argento for Best Supporting Actor.
Graduated in law in Parma in 1949, more to please his father than out of the desire to be a lawyer, still at a young age he revealed a predilection for everything that was entertainment: revue performances, stage readings, theater and film criticism, organization of cinema circles, direction of plays. Already at the age of 18, in December 1943, with the name of Mimmolo Valli (Mimmolo was the way he was called by his loved ones), he made his debut in Campagnola Emilia with the show Follie di December together with a fourteen-year-old dancer who a few years later will become Delia Scala.
From 1949 the theater became his main occupation: he was in fact aggregated to the company Il Carrozzone by Fantasio Piccoli, with which he made his debut in Miles gloriosus. Valli will remain three years in this company. From 1952 he performed at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, with Giorgio Strehler directing him in many works, including Six characters in search of an author by Pirandello, which remains one of his flagships, and with whom he toured South America, with notable performances in Julius Caesar, The Jar , The Gear and The Ideal Wife. 1954 was a decisive year for him: together with Giorgio De Lullo (who became his life partner as well as stage), Rossella Falk , Elsa Albani and Anna Maria Guarnieri created the Compagnia dei Giovani. While leaving due credit to the directorial talent of Giorgio De Lullo, Valli proved to be the soul of the Company until the year of its dissolution, in 1972. Even after the end of the Compagnia dei Giovani, Valli, De Lullo, Falk and Albani continued to act together. A subtle and incisive actor, he put himself to the test in an important number of roles, above all those of Pirandello's theatre, which he always tackled with grace, intelligence and interpretative vigor. Among the many interpretations those in Lorenzaccio, The diary of Anne Frank, Six characters in search of an author, Henry IV, The imaginary patient, The friend of the wives, So it is (if you like) and No man's land, alongside De Lullo.
Romolo Valli e Giorgio De Lullo
Valli also had an important film career, being directed by the greatest directors: he is remembered in The Great War (1959) and A Little Borghese (1977) by Mario Monicelli , The Girl with a Suitcase (1961) by Valerio Zurlini , and above all The Leopard (1963) and Death in Venice (1971) by Luchino Visconti, The garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970) by Vittorio De Sica, Giù la testa (1971) by Sergio Leone, where he plays Doctor Villega and Novecento ( 1976) of Bernardo Bertolucci. He was awarded the Nastro d'Argento for Best Supporting Actor three times: in 1963 for A Milanese Story (1962) by Eriprando Visconti, in 1971 for The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970) by Vittorio De Sica and in 1977 for interpretation of the office manager Spaziani in Mario Monicelli 's Un Borghese Piccolo Piccolo (1977). He also worked as a voice actor. Among the interpretations the role of narrator both in And came a man by Ermanno Olmi (1965) and in the Italian version of Barry Lyndon (1975) by Stanley Kubrick.
In addition to the cinema and the theater, Valli has worked for the radio, in the popular show Gran Variety where he played the character of the maleducator. A man of great culture, his fundamental literary passion was the work of Marcel Proust, In search of lost time, but he also remembered the readings of the posthumous works of Ennio Flaiano, including Autobiography of a Prussian Blue. He was, between 1971 and 1978, artistic director of the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto and, starting from 1977, together with Giorgio De Lullo and Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, the permanent director of the Teatro Eliseo and the Piccolo Eliseo in Rome.
He died at the age of 54 in a car accident on the Via Appia Antica in Rome on the night of February 1, 1980, on his return from the Eliseo theater where he had performed Before the Silence, a one-act play written by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi for Valli himself and put staged by Giorgio De Lullo. He is buried in the famedium of the Monumental Cemetery of Reggio Emilia. The Municipal Theater of the same city is named after him .
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