Anna Proclemer – powerful Italian stage actress – dies at 89

Anna Proclemer (Trento, 30 May 1923 – Rome, 25 April 2013)

One of Italy’s greatest actresses died this morning on the eve of her 90th birthday. Anna Proclemer was primarily a stage animal with a searing presence and powerful voice, allowing her to dominate every stage she stood on. She was a larger-than-life actress, the like of which doesn’t really exist today: a true star.

Proclemer worked with the giants of Italian theatre, Giorgio Strehler and Luca Ronconi, and played Vittorio Gassmann’s Ophelia in 1952. She was a memorable Jocasta in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex three times, including one production with Gassmann in 1955, and with her frequent partner Giorgio Albertazzi in 1969 at Milan’s La Scala in a production designed by Pier Luigi Pizzi and with Claudio Abbado conducting a specially commissioned score. She returned to La Scala in 2007 as Duchesse von Crackentorp in Franco Zeffirelli’s La fille du régiment.

One of her last performances was on film when she made a rare screen appearance in Ferzan Özpetek’s Magnifica presenza in 2012.

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano’) about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia’ column for Dancing Times magazine.