A stamp to pay homage to the Maestro. While all of Florence yesterday, February 12, 100 years after his birth, remembered him with a day of celebrations culminating in the passage of the tricolor arrows. Poste Italiane announces that the stamp will be issued by the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy: it will belong to the thematic series “Italian excellence in entertainment” and will have a postal value of 1.20 euros. The circulation will be 300,000 and 15 copies.
The cartoon reproduces, on the left, a portrait of Franco Zeffirelli in the foreground of two sketches made by the director himself for some theatrical works he directed, respectively the «Cavalleria Rusticana», for the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1978, and a costume of «Antonio e Cleopatra» made for the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 1966. At the top right, a film clapperboard is depicted, representing his masterpieces created for the cinema.
«”My creed is: do your job, be generous with those who have had less luck, recognize and exalt the merit of others”. A great master was born 100 years ago, of life even before cinema, an art in which he was and is still an absolute reference today. A man who brought Italian cinema and theater to the world. Original director and screenwriter, coherent and never conformist intellectual, man of great faith, true Florentine, Franco Zeffirelli leaves us a gigantic legacy and great teachings”. Says the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, recalling in his own words, Gian Franco Corsi, aka Franco Zeffirelli on the centenary of his birth. “We all remember his unconventional and unconventional choices, in his private life films such as Brother Sun, Sister Moon, poetic re-enactment of the life of St. Francis, Young Toscanini, Romeo and Juliet and especially the television miniseries Jesus of Nazareth aired in 1977 on Rai 1. Even today we imagine Jesus with that actor’s face. These choices give us the measure of his greatness ».
While Vittorio Sgarbi adds: «Zeffirelli was a festive, cheerful man, alive to the point of totality: he would have looked at Sanremo with a certain suspicion, I imagine, because there is also a way and a way to be homosexual, there is no need to flaunt it». This was stated by Vittorio Sgarbi, Undersecretary for Culture, speaking today in Florence at the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Franco Zeffirelli. “He would never have married, he thought of freedom in a pagan dimension, compatible with the Christian one”.