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It was in the early 1990s that Giorgio Quintini, who had been working on a long and still unpublished novel called Apocalypse Wow!, picked up his pen and decided to use his remarkable skills as a raconteur to write a series of monologues, or at the most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.