Maestro Giorgio Albertazzi, Italy’s premier theater and film actor, theater director, professor and writer, delighted a large audience of students, faculty and admirers with the recount of his own personal relationship with the controversial character of Emperor Hadrian, during the Interdisciplinary Workshop organized by AUR on April 11.
Albertazzi’s presentation featured the screening of his superb interpretation of Marguerite Yourcenar’s The Memoirs of Hadrian, played in the midst of Villa Adriana’s ruins. Albertazzi described Emperor Hadrian as a restless intellectual character, fickle and adventurous, an Emperor who was more passionate about beauty and love than about war. The Maestro said that he had felt particularly moved by what Yourcenar’s Hadrian describes as the downfall of beauty at the moment that beauty reaches its peak, referring to Hadrian’s Greek lover, Antinous.
Albertazzi has collaborated with major cinema and theater personalities such as Luchino Visconti, Joseph Losey, Franco Zeffirelli and Alain Resnais. He has interpreted numerous roles in both classical and modern plays and has received many awards in his own country and abroad. He is 88, and is currently planning to found a drama school in Rome.
Left to Right: Prof. Timothy Martin, Maestro Giorgio Albertazzi and President Andrew Thompson.
