WRITER - "L'ALTRO"

"L'ALTRO" - A VICTORIAN SCANDAL

in one act

Lord Francis Douglas, Lord Drumlanrig, with his brother, Lord Alfred Douglas.

Giorgio Quintini was a great reader. He devoured books, and especially memoirs. His phenomenal memory meant that he remembered the most abstruse details years later. This short play for three actors, a trialogue, draws upon his interest in the period of the decadence in Victorian Britain and parallels he felt it had with contemporary Italy.

After the success of "Intervista a Colette", and then with "Il Gestore", both monologues, he branched out into a subject which had fascinated him for some time, the death of Lord Drumlanrig, the elder brother of Lord Alfred Douglas (Oscar Wilde's lover). It was thought to have been suicide, possibly because he was being blackmailed over a possible intimate relationship with the then Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery. Giorgio took it for granted that this was true in order to write a play about hypocrisy.

A letter from the present writer dated 12th May 2000, which gives some of the background and other details, including the correct titles and relationships of those involved, shows that it was then, just after moving to Ovada, that Giorgio had picked up the topic again and was writing seriously. He had certainly finished it by January 2001 but it was not performed until the end of September 2002, when it was played at the Teatro Gioiello in Turin as part of a season of new works.

The actors were Piero Nuti, Giuliano Bonetto and Andrea Beltrami (in that order below).

Giorgio always appreciated the advice of a leading local writer, Camilla Salvago Raggi, and sent the script to her, probably hoping for an opening for the play in Ovada, something she thought was unlikely in her reply to him dated 24th October 2002.

The play certainly pushed the boundaries of decency to the limits with some very explicit description in the central scenes. It does not seem to have been performed again after Turin for it needed more than just a single narrator and thus Giorgio could not offer to give his own readings.

The typescript of the play opens, as does Colette, with a description of the set but then moves straight away into the odd conversations of these three men, one of whose identities is never revealed.

Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, sometime British Prime Minister.

The play opened thus:

And eighteen pages later it ends mysteriously.

Like his other works, this is not a historical reconstruction but Giorgio Quintini drawing on history to write about things which  interested him. Perhaps one day these fugitive works may be collected and published.

Lord Alfred Douglas and Lord Drumlanrig.

LIFE - SUPERSTITION - IL MALOCCHIO &c.

"IL MALOCCHIO" - THE EVIL EYE

Like many people Giorgio Quintini was superstitious. It was not an intrusive part of his life except in one aspect and that was his fixed and unwavering belief in the powers of the "Evil Eye". Friends remember that there were three names he would not allow to be pronounced in his presence: King Alfonso XIII of Spain; Pope Pius IX; and Professor Mario Praz. He subscribed to the belief that these people carried bad luck and that hearing, or much worse, speaking their names, would bring down upon those present all kinds of evil and misfortune.  Just as actors speak of "The Scottish Play" in order not to say Macbeth, he would use periphrasis for in his book they were jettatori - they cast the Evil Eye.

Perhaps the most famous in Rome, where Giorgio lived, was Mario Praz, whose house is now a museum. In the 1930s he had written on subjects which pious people considered scandalous and he was known as "L'Anglista" or "L'innominabile" to avoid his name being spoken. The Italian writer and critic, Beniamino Placido, who resembled Giorgio Quintini physically, much to Giorgio's disgust when he was sometimes taken for him, wrote an interesting article on Praz and the Evil Eye, which is available online:
http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/1993/06/17/professor-saturno.html

Giorgio, who remembered seeing Praz in Florence, where he was a friend of the celebrated director of the British Institute, Ian Greenlees (who appears in Giorgio's Florentine novel), had many stories of the power of his evil eye. Any incautious reference to him was accompanied by various time-honoured Italian, apotropaic gestures. 

King Alfonso XIII, an unlucky king who died young in exile, was believed to cast bad luck. The Italian dictator, Mussolini, believed this and refused to meet him. Giorgio was brought up in the Fascist period and will have been indoctrinated in the belief. His was another name never to be mentioned, whose image, if it appeared on the page of a magazine, would be quickly turned over, accompanied by suitable gesturing.

The third name he eschewed was that of Pope Pius IX, who had had a bad reputation in Rome since it was believed that disasters fell upon those places and people blessed by him. It was he who had been replaced in Rome by the troops of France when the Roman Republic fell in 1849 and he was the first Pope to retire into the Vatican, where he held himself to be a prisoner after the 1870 unification of Italy.  A friend of Giorgio's has a story of how in Perugia he was given an old silver medal showing Pius IX and he cast it out of his window.

There was one local superstition in which Giorgio believed fervently. That was "penne, pena!" (feathers mean trouble!). He was especially afraid of peacock feathers, which had come into fashion as gifts in the 1960s and occasionally people would give them to him. He threw them out of the house immediately, as he did with any greetings cards sporting feather designs.

However, Giorgio had a lifelong feeling of sympathy for fortune tellers and he often said that he would like to retire to the provinces and become a reader of cards himself. One of his friends for some years was a lady he met when she was telling horoscopes, Carla, whose friend and supporter he became. Here they are together in Rome.

Giorgio & Carla

WRITER - "THEODORUS"

"THEODORUS"

un atto di

GIORGIO QUINTINI

"The living are just a rare species of the dead...The living, I think, are larvae of the dead - dead bodies at an early stage of development."

Patrick McGrath, The Grotesque.

The quotation is from McGrath's 1989 Gothic novel and Giorgio Quintini used it, in Italian, as an epigraph at the head of the typescript of his play Theodorus, which he wrote in a period of upheaval and change in his own life. It is a  fitting opening to a somewhat gloomy text, in which the author draws upon his own dark side to resuscitate the shade of the first Paleologo Marquis of Monferrato, Teodoro (1290-1338) and his life and death in the Byzantium and Piedmont of the Medieval period.  It tells the story of his mother's being uprooted from Piedmont and carried to Constantinople and his own exile from Byzantium in cold and gloomy Monferrato.

(GQP archive)

Giorgio had recently left the city of his birth, the Caput Mundi of Rome, where he had lived most of his life, for permanent residence in Ovada, a small town in Monferrato. He was in his sixties and knew he was not going to return to Rome except for short breaks there. He was in exile himself and had to find himself a new role. This monologue helped him to do so.

It also helped him to establish local standing as a member of the once rulers of the region, the Paleologo family, descended from the rulers of Byzantium (themselves to become the last Christian dynasty of Constantinople before it was rudely conquered by the marauding Muslim army of Sultan Mehmed II in 1453).

The play was first "performed", in so far as Giorgio read it to original music by Marco Marchelli, in Ovada on 11th April 2003. This was at the local art association called "Due sotto l'ombrello".

Shortly afterwards the whole text was published as Giorgio's debut in URBS, the journal of the Accademia Urbensis of Ovada. It contained a very brief biographical paragraph on the author and the background to the monologue. It is available online at the following web address:

 http://accademiaurbense.it/pdf/URBS_06-03.pdf

The opening of the published version in URBS.

The opening page of Giorgio's original typescript of Theodorus

Such a success was this that Giorgio was invited to give a repeat performance in September of the same year at Villa Elvira in Silvano d'Orba, near Ovada.

In 2007 he was invited to the prestigious Villa Spinola in Genoa by the "Inner Wheel" association to read his monologue again. Here is the account of the event in their newsletter, which contains the opening paragraphs to the URBS publication, explaining the background to the work. It also has Giorgio as the last descendant of the Paleologo di Monferrato, which was not exactly true as the male line continues in the cadet branch of his Paleologo Oriundi cousins.

In fact it is not difficult to imagine Giorgio looking back on his own past as he struggled with his new life in Monferrato. The character of his Theodorus much reflects his own, as is clear from the ending here in the final page of his typescript. However, though the dark side probably remained with him, Theodorus had given him an opening into the local literary and social world of his new home and he was able to branch out into more historical works about his "family". Here is the final page of the typescript of the monologue.

The opening lines of this last page might be describing the magnificent view of the Castello di Lercaro, near Ovada, which, although much a ruin, has one wing devoted to a home for old people, which is where Giorgio ended his days. The ending of his monologue is almost prophetic.

Castello di Lercaro, Ovada.

WRITER - "INTERVISTA A COLETTE"

"INTERVISTA A COLETTE"

It was in the early 1990s that Giorgio Quintini, who had been working on a long and still unpublished novel called Apocalypse Wow!, picked up his pen and decided to use his remarkable skills as a raconteur to write a series of monologues, or at the most trialogues, for the stage. His first was completed in December 1993 and is set in Paris in 1950.

When he lived for a short while in Paris in the 1950s, one of the characters he did not meet but whose presence was real for him was the writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954), known only by her surname as Colette. She was one of those strong female characters who appealed to Giorgio and about whom he wrote, such as Jolanda di Monferrato and Catherine of Russia.  His monologue has her sitting in her room and looking back on her life as she tells its story.

A photograph of the French novelist signed for Una, Lady Troubridge, the friend of Radclyffe Hall and translator of Colette.

In 1950 she would have been 78 years old and nostalgia for her past life is beautifully captured by Giorgio, as he drew upon his own recollections of the past to capture the tone of the first half of 20th century France. He had researched her life well and one of his pastimes was devouring the memoirs of major and minor writers and socialites of the 19th & 20th centuries. He also had a prodigious memory.

While the author later claimed to have written the piece with the actress Adriana Innocenti, who later performed it, in mind, when he read it to friends in his Via Giulia apartment, himself playing Colette, Innocenti was never mentioned. Neither was she mentioned when, on 11th May 1994, he gave a first reading-performance for a larger public during a reception given for him at the house of some friends in Rome. Giorgio's natural voice was high-pitched and very believable as that of an elderly woman.

As this was deservedly a success he started writing other monologues, and Intervista a Colette was not to be the first of them produced in the theatre. However, when he moved to Ovada in Piedmont it was performed on various occasions, with Adriana Innocenti playing the writer, and it achieved a kind of succès de scandale locally, with later newspaper billboards announcing: "OVADA, STASERA IN SCENA LA "SCANDALOSA" COLETTE".

Here are the first and last pages of Giorgio Quintini's original typescript of the work.

Giorgio Quintini's play shows Colette as she appears propped up on cushions in this photograph taken in 1949.

Giorgio had to wait until 2001 for a pilot performance of the play in Turin. However, it was such a success that it led to other performances by Adriana Innocenti.

This allowed Giorgio to have it performed in what had become his chosen residence, Ovada, where it was introduced by one of the leading local writers, Camilla Salvago Raggi, who did not always approve of Quintini's subject matter. Nevertheless, Giorgio became accepted as a local writer and personality in the town.

Novi Ligure is a small town not very far from Ovada and Giorgio liked to visit it when friends took him there by car. It was where Intervista a Colette was performed with himself as the narrator to especially written music by a young composer, Mirco Marchelli. 

The press release biography of Giorgio's composer, some of whose works can be found on the YouTube site. 

Giorgio's Intervista a Colette was to be but the first of a series of short works for studio theatre, and it opened the way for him to branch out from the world of figurative art and return to a kind of writing which would bring some social as well as artistic renown. It also allowed him to combine his passion for history and the past with memories of his own personal life and interests. Colette deserves to be performed again.

FRIENDS - IVY NICHOLSON

IVY NICHOLSON 

(model, actress, singer, artist)

Anyone who knew Giorgio Quintini was used to his recollections of a friend from his youth to whom he often referred. Ivy Nicholson appeared as a main character in his 1960 novel, I malnati, and a photograph of the two of them together was used as the poster of his evening of recollections about his life with fashion, Moda e Modi, which he performed in Ovada in old age.

Giorgio Quintini & Ivy Nicholson in Paris, 1950s

As Giorgio is not here to give us his direct memories of Ivy and there is no typescript of Moda e Modi, perhaps the best way to show the impact she had upon him when they became friends in Paris is to quote from his novel, I malnati, which is dealt with elsewhere on this blog. The protagonist, Andrea, has introduced his friend Eva to another friend, Pablo. Eva is very much based upon Ivy, of whom, in private notes to his novel he writes: "...famosissima top model americana, attrice e pittrice (Gli sbandati di Maselli, Le avventure di Casanove etc.), terrà una mostra personale all' "Obelisco", famosa galleria di Irene Brin e Gasparo dal Corso. Amante di ...". Here are Andrea's reflections on Eva.

I malnati, p.14

 The following has been taken from the internet and is a pocket biography of Ivy Nicholson.

Ivy Nicholson was born Irene Nicholson in Queens, New York to working class Irish Catholic parents. She started modeling at the age of 16, and became very successful, gracing the covers of Vogue and Elle. In those days there was not much in the way of work for older models, so when she turned 30, Ivy sought out acting roles, eventually landing in Andy Warhol's Factory. There she appeared in minor roles in a handful of Warhol films, and met and married Ciao Manhattan (1972) director John Palmer, who was working as a camera man at the Factory. In 1970, Ivy moved to Paris, where she painted and guided her children's careers. Ivy has four children. Her oldest son, Darius DePoleon, is a viscount, and is a musician in Paris. He is in a band called "Eurotrash" with other European royals. Her second son, Sean Bolger, is a fashion photographer in Los Angeles. Her daughter with John Palmer, Penelope Palmer, was a child actress and starred in Le Femme Enfant alongside Klaus Kinski. Penelope's twin brother, Gunther Palmer, was a child model in Paris and is a drummer and vocalist in the band Stagefright.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: scalifornia@iconoclastsf.org

Ivy Nicholson in the kind of photograph she did for Vogue and other fashion magazines.

 For the whole of his life, until he retired into the Castello di Lercaro in Ovada, Giorgio kept two early portraits of himself on his sitting room walls. They had been done by a very competent Ivy Nicholson and they captured him as a young man as nobody else had done.

"Per Giorgio, con tanta curiosità di tua nuova personalità . . . (illegible) . . . Ivy"

"To Giorgio, Ivy"

As stated above and elsewhere on this blog, when, as a racconteur in public and in private, Giorgio started to remember the past, Ivy Nicholson was an important presence in his life.

Giorgio & Ivy in Paris

Ivy Nicholson is still going strong, as anyone can see from her Facebook page and the most cursory glance at her on Google. She has been a part of many people's lives and happily continues to be so.

FRIENDS - SNAPSHOTS

SNAPSHOTS OF SOME FRIENDS & ACQUAINTANCES 

Giorgio Quintini led a rich social life. He had many friends and because of his chosen sphere of work, also had many more acquaintances. Here are some photographs. When any more snapshots turn up or are kindly sent by email (to giorgioqp@libero.it) they can be hosted here.

Giorgio with the art critic and curator Pier-Luigi Tazzi (Rome 1962)

Giorgio Quintini wearing the large silver Paleologo ring he used for years, with Noemi Servadio at at the presentation of his novel, I malnati, in Florence in 1960

Giorgio, at a reception with Jean-Jacques Feurer and Juliana Sarouphim. The lady was an artist from the Lebanon and a contemporary of Giorgio. The young man may be a Swiss national born in 1939 and died in California in 2003, but nothing else is known about him.

Giorgio Quintini in Florence (1960) with a Contessa Battaglini.

Giorgio on the Spanish Steps with Supith Hyranyather (1962)

Giorgio Quintini at a party held by James Bayley & Timmy Tengroth below. Giorgio (centre left) is in conversation with the the seated young man who accompanied Gian Tomaso Liverani (1919-2000) the art gallery owner (far left).

The hosts of the party above, James Bayley (1924-1995) an Australian writer working in Rome, and Sten ("Timmy") Tengroth (1935-1991). They lived on Via Claudia, by the Colosseum but this was to be the last time they invited Giorgio for he blotted his copy book on this occasion.

James Dorset, or James Dorset-East, or Stephen East, turned up at Giorgio Quintini's in Rome. As a stringer for various magazines he was on the lookout for international gossip and so he latched on to Giorgio to whom he had been introduced by a mutual friend in Paris. Alas this is the only image, sent by Giorgio himself, which is a photocopy from an article in The Tatler. Dorset was savaged by a certain "Lady Colin Campbell" in her scandalous biography of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. In actual fact he was good if unintentionally comic company, a collector of Royalty, reigning and not (e.g. ex-Queen Geraldine of Albania was a frequent house guest of his in London). He died young.