Walter Venditti, former primo ballerino at La Scala, dies at 95

Walter Venditti, a well-loved figure in Italy’s ballet world, died yesterday morning. He was 95.

To accompany a series of photos I took of him teaching at his ballet school when he was 84, I wrote:

Milan is the sort of city which empties as soon as holidays arrive, and in Italy there are lots of holidays. The schools are shut and so are private dancing schools… except for that of Walter Venditti.

Everyone knows that Venditti will have a lesson, even when there’s hardly a local around. He’s 84, and teaches around sixteen lessons a week, demonstrating steps and creating fiendishly difficult and fast Cecchettian combinations.

Venditti joined the ballet company at La Scala in Milan just after the war and stayed until 1976. During that time he worked alongside Massine and his idol, Balanchine, as well as dancing in productions with Nureyev, Fracci, Fonteyn, and Beriosova. His passion for Spanish dance led to a collaboration with Antonio Gades, and his love for tip-tap brought him to the Italian television screen in musical numbers as well as classical.

After an injury when he was 40, he was forced to leave his dancing career, and soon after formed his school, which is attended by everyone from the lawyer during her lunch break to Roberto Bolle.

Thank you, Walter Venditti, for your constancy, enthusiasm and love of dance and dancers.

See over 40 photos of M° Venditti at work on Flickr.

La Scala left the following tribute together with a selection of photos of Walter Venditti from its archives:

Teatro alla Scala and its corps de ballet are thinking of Maestro Walter Venditti, who passed away yesterday, a major figure in the history of Italian dance in many of its forms. A performer, choreographer, teacher, company director and author of books, with many awards including being named a Knight of the Italian Republic. He was a protagonist of La Scala’s post-war years where his name is intertwined with that of Aurel Milloss, to whom Arturo Toscanini gave the task of reassembling the scattered ranks of the ballet company after the Second World War. Milloss (who later directed the company on several occasions), flanked the many female stars with new male dancers including Ugo Dell’Ara, Giulio Perugini, Mario Pistoni, Walter Venditti and the younger Amedeo Amodio.

Venditti was a principal dancer from 1950 to 1975, as well as teacher with the company and at the theatre’s ballet school. He made 710 appearances on the stage between 14 August 1946, when he made his debut at Milan’s Palazzo dello Sport in Coppélia, and the last was in a performance of Excelsior on 24 March 1975. His career at La Scala remains in the annals with a prestigious list of choreographers,  artists and works that have made the history of our theatre, from Aurel Milloss to Serge Lifar, from Léonide Massine to George Balanchine, Mario Pistoni, John Cranko, Yvette Chauviré, Margot Fonteyn, Antonio Gades, Luciana Novaro, Vera Colombo, Fiorella Cova, Elettra Morini, Carla Fracci, Rudolf Nureyev and many others. We cherish his memory with these precious images from our archive.

Gramilano Editor

Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Italian ballerina Carla Fracci.

Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.

He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.