FRIENDS - GIO' STAJANO

GIO' STAJANO

or

Maria Gioacchina Stajano Starace, Contessa Briganti di Panico

(1931-2011)

Giò Stajano in the 1950s

Italian readers of gossip magazines of a certain age will probably be familiar with the life and doings of Giò Stajano. Others may not be, but can easily find out more in various web pages.

Giò Stajano in the 1980s

Some idea of the relationship between Giorgio Quintini and Giò Stajano was given here in the post for 11th May 2015, which gives three different accounts of Giorgio from various books by Giò (always known in Casa Quintini as "La Giò"). They met and shared a flat in Rome in the 1950s, when both of them tried their hand at art. Giò tells the story in his/her memoirs, La Mia Vita Scandalosa (1992), which is illustrated in the earlier post. They were young and from backgrounds with certain things in common: they were both obviously and flamboyantly homosexual; they both came from the provinces of Italy and had moved to the capital to live more freely; they were nearly the same age; they had both been brought up with parents or grandparents who were firmly rooted in the military life of the Fascist period; they both flaunted convention, though Giò was braver than Giorgio in this; they were both snobs with a passion for people from the lower classes.  The third person in their ménage was the more successful painter, Novella Parigini (1921-1993), who is pictured  with Giorgio in the post for 13th May 2015.

The present writer remembers that during the supper which Giorgio gave so he and another friend might at last meet "La Giò", which took place in the 1980s after her return from the sex-change operation, Stajano spoke much about the amazing time she had spent answering the letters sent to a weekly magazine called "Men". Naturally, a great deal of the evening was spent talking of absent friends as they had shared much of their youth with other extravagant people of the period such as "Titania, La Biondi", who lived in Milan, and the "Principe Corsini" who comes into most of Gio's books and, as one of Giorgio's friends,warrants a separate post here.

In this period I recall sitting with Giorgio one evening when Giò was taking part in a talk show which invited calls from the public. Giorgio telephoned pretending to be a woman of the lower classes from a suburb of Rome asking for advice about her errant husband. Giò, who had recognised Giorgio's naturally high-pitched voice, let himself go in a tour de force of improvisation. They were a marvelously funny double act, both  self-taught but highly intelligent and cultivated people.

However, after the operation in which Giò changed sex, Giorgio was apprehensive about seeing him too often. There was a conventional side to Giorgio Quintini which was lacking in Stajano, and Giorgio did not wish to be compromised. Giò advised him to go to Casablanca and get the operation done: "It will work better for you, because you are a little person," ("Con te funzionerà meglio, tu che sei piccina").

It was in this period that Giorgio was writing a new and unpublished novel called Apocalypse Wow!, a sort of satire on Italian and especially Roman "Society". One of the characters is a Sicilian duke who changes sex. There is no doubt that some of this character is based upon Giorgio's old friend Giò.

Apocalypse Wow!, opening paragraph of Ch. VII (1985)

Giorgio kept up with news of Giò but he did not see her, especially after she had become a sort of semi-religious recluse in her native Puglia (she had announced to Giorgio years earlier that she intended to become a female saint). The bare bones of his/her life may be found here: 

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gi%C3%B2_Stajano

However, since all of her books are thinly-veiled autobiography, a full reading of them is the best introduction to this really extraordinary and ground-breaking person, who was such a real part of Giorgio Quintini's life when he was a young man.