Notes on The Tempest

Abstract

Giorgio Strehler (1921-1997) established the Piccolo Teatro di Milano in 1947 with a production of Carlo Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters that went on to international acclaim and created the directors reputation as the leader of Italian theatre in postwar Europe. Over four decades he produced definitive versions of Shakespeare (Lear and Measure for Measure along with two productions of The Tempest), Brecht (The Threepenny Opera and The Good Woman of Setzuan), and the great Italian dramatic authors (especially Goldoni's The Villeggiatura Trilogy, and Pirandellos Henry IV andThe Mountain Giants). His first version of The Tempest was performed in the Boboli Gardens in Florence in 1948 with a translation by the poet Salvatore Quasimodo, and featured characters who emerged from the Gardens famous fountains and reflecting pools. The second production, from which the following text derives, was initially staged in 1978 with a translation by longtime collaborator Agostino Lombardo, and performed in the United States in 1984. In this piece Strehler re-imagines the first twenty minutes of The Tempest through the eyes and mind of a spectator. This piece, Shakespeare, oltre La Tempesta wasfirst published in La Nuova Rivista Europea, Vol. 2, No. 5, May-June 1978, 23-40; and then again in the volume Inscenare Shakespeare by Giorgio Strehler, Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1992, pp. 106-131.