Directors, ballet masters, stage directors, choreographers, architects... Octave discovers the personalities that have marked the history of the Opera which continues to attract the great names of music and dance.
Founder of the company Teatro e Azione in Rome and co-founder with Paolo Grassi of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, in 1987, the Italian director Giorgio Strehler also founded the European School of Theatre and in 1990 initiated the Union of the Theatres of Europe. Considered as a reformer of Italian theatre, he has had considerable influence over the development of writing for the stage. His first major success came in 1946 when he staged Caligula by Albert Camus, which was followed by Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters (Il Servitore di due padroni) a year later – a veritable triumph. In 1983, he was appointed director of the Théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris where he directed L’Illusion Comique by Corneille. In 1973, he was invited to the Paris Opera to direct The Marriage of Figaro and again in 1978 for a production of Simon Boccanegra, followed by Il Seraglio in 1984. In addition to pursuing his artistic career, in 1984 Giorgio Strehler represented the Italian Socialist Party at the European Parliament and was an independent left-wing senator in 1987. He died in 1997, from a heart attack when he was about to direct Così fan tutte in Milan.