«The more time passes, the more I become attached to it – he commented -. You become selective over the years. The woman with whom you share your existence, your children, your grandchildren, the people you’ve always worked with, turtles, dogs, cats and Rome. Only she was missing in my everyday life. She made me suffer, she made me so proud, the time has come to do something for her and for her people.’ A year and a half ago from the Giallorossi he became «advisor of communication strategies». She cared about that high-sounding name. Task then left, without regrets: Costanzo remarked that he was not adequately informed and that he had no room for action. He is always consistent, even if he declares himself “faithful to Mourinho”.
Engaged with new challenges until his last years, vigilant until a few days before shutting down, Costanzo he followed the Sanremo festival from a room in the Paideia in Corso Francia, where he was hospitalized. The funeral chamber will be set up on Saturday and Sunday in the Sala della Protomoteca in Campidoglio (entrance from the Portico del Vignola; Saturday from 10.30 to 18, Sunday from 10 to 18, the use of the FFP2 mask is recommended). The funeral will take place on Monday 27 February, at 3 pm, at the Church of the Artists in Piazza del Popolo.
An inseparable bond between the conductor born in Rome on August 28, 1938 and his hometown, of which he always retained a certain sly, ironic spirit, capable of welcoming even the most extraneous and apparently disturbing element, as he demonstrated with The Maurizio Costanzo Show from the Parioli Theater, of which he was also artistic director for a season.
Forty-two editions, the longest running talk show on Italian television. Recorded not far from the house where Costanzo had gone to live after 1995, the year in which married Maria De Filippiafter a five-year engagement. She fourth wife of the showman. Their family then expanded by taking Gabriele into their care, who entered their lives way back in 2002 and then became their legitimate son in 2004.
In his previous lives there are piazza della Libertà, and via Poma, the same where Simonetta Cesaroni was killed, Mazzini-Delle Vittorie district. Nerve heart of communications in the capital. A stone’s throw from the Rai headquarters in viale Mazzini, even if few like him have been able to alternate between public and private service in life: from the state network to Mediaset, and return. Never exhausted: in 1966 he was co-author of the lyrics of the song “Se telephoning”, written with Ghigo De Chiara, music by Ennio Morricone, brought to success by Mina. In the mid-seventies creator and presenter of numerous shows of a TV in its infancy: Goodness them (1976-1978), Acquarium (1978-1979), Grand’Italia (1979-1980) e Fascination (1984). Anticipators of Maurizio Costanzo Show, where he pushed the talk show technique even further, invented by him in competition with a young Luciano Rispoli: in the episodes entitled “One against all” only one guest was invited, usually a politician or showman, who had to answer the questions of the audience, sometimes even provocative.
His loyalty and the courage to expose yourself they also subjected him to attacks by criminals: it was May 14, 1993 when a Fiat Uno stuffed with ninety kilograms of a mix of TNT, T4, pentrite and nitroglycerin, exploded near the Parioli Theater. The target was him, who has always been involved in the fight against the mafia. The attack failed, because the instigators of the attack were expecting an Alfa Romeor. But that day Maurizio and Maria got into a Mercedes. Twenty-two people were injured. He told from his audience in Parioli, with Berlusconi present: «I escaped the attack by chance. The mafia perpetrators were arrested in the first and second degree by the Court of Florence. The investigations testified that I was followed for over a year and a half. Luckily there was a “conflict of interest” between the Corleonesi and the Catanese over who should have the “privilege”. Then the Corleonesi had the privilege. And then for three seconds and a providential low wall out here…I’m still here ».
Only one regret, he said he had, and it was linked to his presence of his name on the P2 Masonic lodge list. Being «related» to Licio Gelli meant saying goodbye to television, to editorial duties at Rizzoli, to the role of director of the «Occhio»: «Days, days of silent telephone. I was alone, at that time, in my Roman house in viale Mazzini». It was Sergio Zavoli who gave him new impetus, but he was the first to want to get back into the game, defining what happened “a big mistake, but mistakes are good for you and help you grow. I don’t believe those who say they’ve never made any, what nonsense… But there are also those who make two or three big mistakes. I one: and I admit it».
And if there was a debt he acknowledged, was for Indro Montanelli: «Uuncle who had understood my early passion for journalism, sent home clippings from the third page of the Corriere della Sera. I fell in love with Montanelli, I found the courage to write to him, I was in high school, back then we went half the week in the morning and half in the afternoon. He called me one morning, we had the phone hanging on the wall in the corridor. I didn’t believe it… I saw him at the Roman office in via della Mercede. He helped me in the first collaborations and encouraged me throughout my life. He called me Costanzino. He did it right up to the end.”
And so much more: in 1986 he ran as a candidate with the Radical party (later he had no hesitation in saying «Berlusconi I respect him as a publisher, but I don’t vote for politicians»). never graduated, he taught starting from 1996 at the Faculty of Communication Sciences of Sapienza From Rome. The Free University of Languages and Communication of Milan thought to fill the absence of him, awarding him an honorary degree in journalism, publishing and multimedia with the motivation «Maurizio Costanzo is a living palimpsest». And who among the boomers does not remember that «good shirt to all» of the famous advertisement in the years from 1985 to 1989, followed by a phrase that has become a refrain, “just a shirt with a mustache”. In 2007, with some discontent from the “robber” Gigi Proietti, he took over the artistic direction of the Teatro Brancaccio in Rome.
Just four months ago, to a weekly reporter Set of the Corriere della Sera who asked ‘How would you like to be remembered?’ answered: ‘I simply hope like a good person who made a program that lasted forty years. A long seller of Italian television. I hope that in 2050 it will be possible to give away the boxes of the Maurizio Costanzo Show as a document, and in my memory. Always better…”.