For people like her, at the end of life colleagues and friends always say: "a life for the theater" or "monogamous in art and life". Today, when her partner Ugo Pagliai gives the news of her death after a long illness (truly a life on stage together), it is natural to consider that of Paola Gassman, born in Milan on 29 June 1945, a few weeks after the end of the world war, when his father Vittorio and mother Nora Ricci were a theater company together with Laura Adani.
The funeral will be held on Friday 12 April at 11am in the church of the Artists in Piazza del Popolo.
His family album coincides with that of the great Italian theatre: five generations of great names on the scene: his grandfather was Renzo Ricci, his paternal great-grandfather Ermete Zacconi, also a son of art. Perhaps it was precisely the growing success of the "showman" Vittorio at the cinema between the 1950s and the following decade that pushed his eldest daughter to a more...stable and traditional choice by enrolling at the Silvio d'Amico Academy where she developed her interpretative versatility and she met her first husband, a classmate and just two years her senior.
From their union, which lasted six years, Simona was born, but with him Paola also shared an important artistic initiation, that of Luca Ronconi who wanted both of them in his Teatro Libero and then called her in the role of Marfisa for his "Orlando Furioso" of 1969 as well as in the dazzling television version of 1975. Paola Gassman meanwhile marked all the great stages of Italian theater in the period of its great transformation after the successes of the 1950s: with Ronconi she was also in "The tragedy of the revenger", directed by Vittorio Gassmann was the protagonist in "Cesare or Nobody", with Lina Wertmueller in "The Kitchen", but the list of his favorite directors is much longer from Squarzina to Castri, from Bolognini to Piccardi, from Sciaccaluga to Piero Maccarinelli. She loved Shakespeare and Goldoni, she did not hesitate to measure herself with the contemporary repertoire, but her real turning point was when she entered the company of Lilla Brignone and Ugo Pagliai in the mid-70s.
It was the methodical and passionate discovery of Luigi Pirandello's theater that marked his career from that moment on with famous productions such as "Liolà", "The pleasure of honesty", "Man, the beast and virtue", " But it's not serious." In the meantime, however, she also changed her private life because her relationship with Ugo Pagliai was truly the love of a lifetime, crowned by the birth of her second son, Tommaso. Pagliai was also a TV star at the time, but together with her Paola he chose the theater as a place of life and art, keeping company with her and going through a whole new theatrical season until the last decade. Subdued, ironic, dazzling on stage, Paola Gassman belongs to the large family of theater actresses who make silences, elegant transformations, whispered or declaimed monologues their hallmark.
Little was seen on television, especially for filming of theatrical shows, but "Forgetting Lisa" by Salvatore Nocita and "The Cat in the Pocket" directed by Luigi Proietti are notable exceptions. Even with the cinema he chose to have only brief encounters. We would like to remember, among others: "General protest" by Luigi Zampa and "From father to son", both linked to his father Vittorio, or the latest appearances, Padre mio", documentary by Antonio D'Ottavio and "A Martian named Ennio " by Vittorio Cavuti. She told her story in the modest autobiography "A big family behind her back" in 2007. She was much loved, even by her brothers Jacopo and Alessandro who today hailed her as "the wisest" in an unrepeatable family.
Alessandro Gassmann: 'Hi Paola, you have always been the wisest'
"Hello my sister. You have always been the wisest of all of us, the most reassuring, the most balanced and nice. I will always love you, like everyone who knew you." Alessandro Gassmann writes this on Twitter, in a post in which he remembers his sister Paola, who passed away at the age of 78.