MILAN – Today, that excessive genius of Carmelo Bene was born, or rather was not born . An actor, playwright, director, writer and poet, one of the most incisive of the Italian post-war scene. Remembered not only for his extraordinary acting art but also for his profound reflections on the meaning of life / existence: “I don’t exist therefore I am” or “You are not born to work, to explain yourself, to think: you are not even born to de-think because also this is to deal with thinking. We are not born to manage, to act-suffer: it is all inflicted on us by circumstances “. LIFE – Who is Carmelo Bene
An all-round artist who was born in 1937 in Campi Salentina, in the Lecce area. After his classical studies – and a brief experience at the Academy of Dramatic Art (he abandons it considering the courses “useless”) – he enjoys Rome, getting drunk frequently and smoking a lot, sometimes he is even arrested. In the year 1958 alone, the very young Bene spent “three hundred and twenty-five nights in the various police stations in the area”. In 1959, just twenty-two, he made his debut as the protagonist of Camus’ Caligula. Despite his family’s aversion – his father sent him to an asylum for a few weeks – he married Giuliana Rossi, a Florentine actress six years older than him. From their union a son was born, raised mainly by his maternal grandparents and died at the age of five due to a tumor. THE TURNING POINT– The turning point came during the Florentine years with the reading of Joyce – especially Ulysses – which opened him up to existentialism. Within a few seasons he became a director of himself in plays such as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Salome, Hamlet and in films such as Nostra Signora dei Turchi (which won the Special Jury Prize in Venice in 1968) . He founded a company, then from 1961 until 1963 he established the so-called “Teatro Laboratorio”, built in a local in Trastevere, which was then closed after various accusations such as “piss on the stalls”. However, the happenings and performances always continue to the limit. An important turning point also comes with the arrival of the actress Lydia Mancinelli who for the first time starred in The story of Sawney Bean (based on a text by Roberto Lerici) of 1964. He has an artistic and sentimental partnership with her. In the sixties and seventies Mancinelli and Alfiero Vincenti are two fundamental and irreplaceable figures for Bene. After the seizure and definitive closure of the Teatro Laboratorio, they spend six months with the staging of the Teatro Carmelo Bene al Divino Amore (1967), a brief experience like the other precedent of Beat ’72, which opened in 1966. In this same Furthermore, Bene wrote the novels Nostra Signora dei Turchi and Credito Italiano, which were then taken to the theater. With Pasolini he approaches cinema, with Dali art and 1974 and the year of his first appearance on television with “Four ways to die in verse: Majakowski, Blok, Esenin, Pasternak”. She extraordinary she also recites poems, such as those of Mayakovsky that she was able to animate with her thunderous voice. 1979 marks the beginning of his so-called concert period and of the acting machine, arriving to perform at the Scala in Milan with a memorable Manfred in the form of a concert accompanied by the music of Robert Schumann. Also in Milan she caused a sensation at the Manzoni theater for female nudes on stage.THE DEATH – In 1981 he read Dante while seven years later he was appointed, without many complaints, artistic director of the theater section of the Venice Biennale. After a few months of marriage to Raffaella Baracchi, the newspapers reported the news of the beatings inflicted by Bene on his six-month pregnant wife, fortunately without serious consequences for his wife or the fetus. The last companion was instead Luisa Viglietti, the costume designer who lived next to him until the moment of her disappearance. On 6 October 2000, the actor entrusted the rights of his works to the Carmelo Bene foundation, by means of a public will. On March 16, 2002, Carmelo Bene died in Rome. For his sister the great actor would have died at the hands of others.
“My epitaph could be that passage from Sade: I insist on living because« Even when I am dead I continue to be the cause of any disorder »”.
