Farewell to Glauco Mauri, the actor born in 1930 and who died late yesterday evening on the threshold of his 94th birthday , which he would have celebrated on October 1st.
For him, an unconditional and total love for the theatre: «I love art for life and I'm not very interested in art for art's sake, the beautiful thing was that theatre and life met, they became one, I didn't bring theatre into my life, I brought my life into the theatre», he would say.
His love for acting began when he went on stage with the amateur dramatics club of his parish in Pesaro , at 15, as the protagonist of “La notte del vagabondo” . He discovered, he said, that he immediately felt different, “losing all modesty, complexes and insecurities on stage”, so three years later he showed up in Rome at the Academy of Dramatic Arts directed by Silvio D'Amico, among his teachers Orazio Costa, Wanda Capodaglio, Sergio Tofano.
He began then, making his debut in 1953 in Macbeth directed by Costa, a career that has been "a web of opportunities and encounters". This was the case in "Shakespeare's Twelfth Night" directed by Renato Castellani, and Smerdjakov, a beloved role and his success, in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov with Memo Benassi, Lilla Brignone, Gianni Santuccio and Enrico Maria Salerno, directed by Andrè Barsaq. Then the seasons from 1961 with the glorious Compagnia dei Quattro, together with Valeria Moriconi with Franco Enriquez, Emanuele Luzzati and then Mario Scaccia. Since he left the Academy, he has acted for 70 years without missing a season, as if by necessity, or rather with the naturalness of his life, if he had planned to open the season of the Vascello in Rome last Thursday with De profundis by Oscar Wilde, cancelled due to the sudden worsening of his health conditions.
But Mauri was no longer the same since, exactly a year ago, Roberto Sturno passed away at the age of 78, his companion on the road, in work, in life in art for over 40 years, since the company that bore their name was born in 1981 with Brecht's Mr Puntila and his servant Matti:.
His unmistakable and expressively powerful voice was familiar in the days of the Theatre on the Radio, then he also moved to TV and was present in some famous dramatized novels, from Dostoevsky's Demons to Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks. He also worked in the cinema and appeared in films such as China is Near by Marco Bellocchio (1967), The Constancy of Reason by Festa Campanile (1964), The Guest by Liliana Cavani (1971), Deep Red by Dario Argento (1975), Ecce Bombo by Nanni Moretti (1978). Our Chaplin defined him as Strehler, capturing in that big man with thick curly hair, white at the end, the dramatic spirit, the fine irony, the strength of feeling, the intensity of the gaze capable of revealing a sly trait.
