He was married to soprano Anna Moffo
Rome – He was 94 years old. From 1957 to 1974 he was married to the soprano Anna Moffo. Died Mario Lanfranchi, eminent and eclectic personality of culture and entertainment, theater, film and television director, actor and screenwriter, among the pioneers of the small screen in our country, through which he contributed to reaffirm thea very wide popularity of the opera.
He died on Monday 3 January, Adnkronos learns, at the age of 94 in the cur’s housein Valparma di Langhirano (Parma), a few kilometers away from the seventeenth-century family villa of Santa Maria del Piano in Lesignano de ‘Bagni where he had lived for some time. The body will be buried during a private ceremony next Friday in the Langhirano cemetery. Born in Parma on June 30, 1927, after graduating from the Accademia dei Filodrammatici in Milan, in 1952 Lanfranchi was called by Sergio Pugliese, director of television programs, to collaborate with the nascent Rai.
He was the first to bring opera to the small screen, in 1956, with “Madama Butterfly” by Giacomo Puccini, which revealed to the general public Anna Moffo, then an unknown young American soprano, who became his wife the following year and with whom divorced in 1974.
There have been dozens of lyric operas directed by Lanfranchi for TV and some also for cinema, including “La traviata” (1967) and “Lucia di Lammermoor” (1971), both performed by Moffo. In 1968 Lanfranchi made his debut as a film director, with the western film “Sentence of death”.
Among his other films “Il bacio” (1974), “Genoa by armed hand” (1976) and “The mistress is served” (1976). His latest film is “Venice, carnival, one love” with Rudolf Nureyev, Carla Fracci, Peter Ustinov and Charles Aznavour. For Rai Lanfranchi also explored the field of advertising, conceiving and producing in partnership with the director Sandro Bolchi many of the best known Carosellis during the 60s and 70s: for Ferrero (“The friendly face”, later modified in “Il Gigante Amico” with the perfidious Jo Condor), Cirio (“The country of the sun”), Banca Commerciale Italiana (with Massimo Inardi, doctor and musicologist, winner in the finals of the “Rischiatutto” champions), Mobil (“I futuribili”).
Lanfranchi was the owner of an important art collection (later sold at auction) and also owner of well-known greyhound and horse stables (first in trot and then in gallop). In the last thirty years he had settled in the villa of Santa Maria del Piano, inherited from his mother’s family, the Balestra, noble patricians of Parma. (by Paolo Martini)
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