An Autobiographical Allegory: Franco Zeffirelli’s Tea With Mussolini

Abstract

It is not surprising that the approach of the final decade of the twentieth century found Franco Zeffirelli in a reflective frame of mind. His life had been, by almost any measure, eventful. Rising from obscurity to renown, he had experienced danger, had known the famous and the beautiful, and had turned his youthful love of opera and the theatre into a glittering career as a designer, director, and producer. In his mid-1960s, he had reached the time of life when successful men and women often think of writing their autobiographies. But he hesitated. Although he discussed the idea on occasion with close friends, it still seemed ‘slightly preposterous’, he thought, ‘to write down my life as though it was finished and complete.’ Deeply suspicious of the motives that prompted others to sum themselves up on the printed page, he was equally unsure of being able to make a good job of it if he attempted it himself. At length, his internal debate bore fruit and, when he began to conceive of the project as the work of ‘a raconteur, rather than a writer’, he knew what to do. He would simply tell his story.¹