Alfredo Furiga Biography
Alfredo Furiga (1903 – 1972) was born in Olginasio, near Varese in 1903. He attended the first course of the drawing school in Germignaga, between 1914 and 1919 he moved to Milan where he attended courses in ornamentation (1919) and scenography ( 1921) of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. He took part in the scenography of Adriana Lecouvreur by F. Cilea staged at the Metropolitan theater in New York and in the 1920s he created the scenes for Turandot and Tosca by G. Puccini, performed respectively at Covent Garden in London (1925) and at the Teatro Municipal in Santiago of Chile (1926). His interest in the developments of stagecraft brought him closer to the experiments of the "mechanical stage", a scenic system which allows one to create a highly suggestive effect with extreme ease and speed and which was tested in 1927 at the new Opera House. of Rome, remodeled by M. Piacentini on the ancient Costanzi theatre. In 1928, he began his collaboration with the Rome Opera, creating scenes for many operas, until 1943. Alongside his intense activity as a set designer and costume designer, Furiga added that of a painter. His production, initially characterized by a painting inspired by nature and landscape, turned, through the suggestions of first and second futurism, towards the atmospheres of the so-called Roman School. In 1932 he held his first solo show at the Galleria del Milione in Milan, where he exhibited 40 works including paintings and drawings. Over the years he took part in many exhibitions: in the International Exhibition of theatrical stagecraft at the VI Triennale of Milan in 1936, in the II Quadrennial of National Art in Rome, and in two installation projects for a room of the Triennial Exhibition of Overseas Lands and Work Italian in the world. Listed by E. Prampolini (1940) among the young Italian stage technicians most attentive to innovation. Furiga was a sensitive interpreter of Futurist theories on perspective simultaneity and chromatic-spatial architecture, which he had the opportunity to put into practice by taking care of the scenography of various shows for the Teatro delle Arti company, on tour in Latin America. In 1946, a fervent monarchist, urged by Italian political events, he moved to Portugal, where he was appointed director of the stage design of the São Carlos theater in Lisbon. In 1949 he returned to Italy. In these years, together with the numerous sets for the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, for the Opera of Rome and for some editions of the opera season of the Arena of Verona, F. also signed an interesting production of posters of great pictorial quality and inventiveness . He died in Rome in 1972.
