Giorgio Ferrara and a personal memory of an extraordinary family

As his wife once said, when you fall in love with Giuliano, you also fall in love with his family. Anyone who knew her father Maurizio and mother Marcella cannot fail to agree with what Selma says, and this absolutely applies to her older brother: there is a trait of civilization transmitted by the Ferrara family that has always struck me every time I have had relationships with them. Those who know Giorgio’s commitment to the theatre, from his work with Luca Ronconi to the direction of the Teatro Stabile Veneto, those who have seen his cinematographic and television works, admire his professionalism illuminated by a profound culture. But who knew him personally, who remembers his love for him with Adriana Asti, those who have been able to grasp the delicate and magnificent relationship with the not infrequently impetuous younger brother, in addition to culture and professionalism, have a memory first of all of how much culture in him transformed into a rare human sensitivity.

In many years of professional relationships and then of friendship with Giuliano, I who am the same age as Giorgio can testify how many times “the older brother” gave his “younger brother” invaluable moral and psychological support, how much he lived in Giorgio that spirit of the Ferrara family that enchanted those who, after meeting my overwhelming old “director”, had the opportunity to grasp the environment that had formed and supported him. Today we mourn the loss of an intellectual, an artist, a splendid cultural organizer and it is absolutely wrong to remember him only as a “brother”. But I don’t want to remember a brother here but a person who participated in the life of such an extraordinary family.