Long Ago in Spoleto: Carla Fracci, Grand Dame of Italian Ballet

On the day of her death, last 27 May, the NY Times described her as the Grand Dame of Italian ballet, one of the greatest dancers of the 20th century: Carla Fracci, a luminous star of dance, endowed with sublime expressiveness and elegance, forged a close bond with Spoleto, where she marked important milestones in her illustrious career.

Thanks to the official programmes of the Festival of Two Words, preserved at the Carducci Library, it is possible to have an idea of Fracci’s prestigious presence in Spoleto and reconstruct a significant part of the artistic story of one of the greatest interpreters of classical dance, to whom this episode of the column “Long Ago in Spoleto” is dedicated.

On 22nd June 1962, “Il Balletto del Festival dei Due Mondi” made its debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Spoleto, the first of five performances of what was to become the highlight of the fifth edition of the Spoleto Festival. The protagonist is a young étoile from La Scala, Carla Fracci, who enchants the audience with “Una infanta defunta” from Ravel and “Il Teatrino di Cristobal” from Garcia Lorca set to music by Joaquín Turina. Both were designed by Beppe Menegatti, a director with whom Fracci had been partnered for some time, whom she married two years later and who continued to design numerous ballets for her over the years.

Carla Fracci | Festival dei Due Mondi 1962

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Fracci returned to Spoleto some ten years later. She had left the stage on the occasion of the birth of her son Francesco in 1969 and Eugenio Montale, her friend and admirer, at the time music critic of the “Corriere della Sera” dedicated the poem “La danzatrice stanca” to Fracci’s slow return to the stage after motherhood. “La danzatrice stanca” (The weary dancer) appeared in Montale’s collection of lyrics “Diario del ’71 e del ’72”.

Having returned to her splendid form, Fracci re-embraced Spoleto at the 1973 Festival when she danced with Paolo Bortoluzzi in “Coppelia” and “Silfide” during “Celebration”, a tribute to the art of Pas de Deux, a show conceived and directed by Jerome Robbins. Another memorable occasion was in June 1975 when in “Medea” Fracci, together with Mikhail Baryshnikov, took part in a concert of music and dance to celebrate the art of Samuel Barber with choreography by John Bulter.

In 1977, still paired with Paolo Bortoluzzi, Fracci took part in the Festival’s first “Dance Marathon” directed by Alberto Testa and Vittoria Ottolenghi, one of the most celebrated and admirable events of the Menottian festival, for which Fracci would return again in 1980 with Alexander Godunov in Giselle, a perfect synthesis of her talent, in 1984 with Gheorghe Iancu and in 1995 with an International Marathon entitled “Friends”.

The colour photos showing Carla Fracci as the protagonist of the International Dance Week, chosen by Alberto Testa as the event’s patroness, to reward the promising young dancers and to offer the younger generations a live commentary on her extraordinary repertoire of images immortalising her teaching, date from 2013.

Carla Fracci | Settimana Internazionale della Danza 2013

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