The dancer and ballet director Anna Razzi has died at the age of 85.
She was honorary president and director of the ballet company at Teatro San Carlo in Naples from 2006 to 2009, and was well respected as director of the theatre’s dance school from 1990 to 2015. However, it is as a dancer that she made her name, rising to the rank of étoile at La Scala in Milan.
She was part of the company at La Scala from 1963 to 1986, her most memorable roles being in Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, Giselle, Sleeping Beauty, and Coppélia in the classical repertoire, to works such as Fokine’s Petrushka, Balanchine’s Apollon musagète and Birgit Cullberg’s Miss Julie, in the 20th century. She collaborated often with Rudolf Nureyev and Paolo Bortoluzzi, both as a partner and as an interpreter of their choreography.
With La Scala on tour, she danced Giselle with Nureyev at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1981, and she was chosen by Roland Petit to create his ballet The Marriage of Heaven at La Scala.
Frédéric Olivieri, director of the Corps de Ballet and Ballet School of the Accademia Teatro alla Scala, remembers her:
I was deeply saddened to hear of Anna’s passing. She was a great all-round artist who truly dedicated her entire life to our art with enthusiasm. I had the opportunity to dance with her when I was a principal dancer with the Ballets de Monte-Carlo and to see her on stage in her favourite roles.
I always admired her as a great professional: she was precise, leaving nothing to chance, but on stage she knew how to be free, strong and intense at the same time, with a deep sense of interpretation, and she put that same energy, precision and dedication to her roles as director of the San Carlo Theatre Ballet Company and its Ballet School, where she did remarkable work to nurture young talent, organising performances and creating new opportunities, both for her students and for the growth of dance across the many generations she accompanied.
Razzi was known for her acting, and she had studied at Milan’s Filodrammatici Academy as an actress before joining the ballet company at La Scala. In Anna Kisselgoff’s review of her Giselle in The New York Times, she wrote:
Miss Rizzi’s acting is top notch. If her mad scene was conventional, it was correctly so… [Her] Giselle in Act II is very much in the Romantic mold. She retains the Romantic imagery, and again, her attention to dramatic detail made this act a picture of love. Her return to the grave was particularly moving.
She died peacefully in her adopted hometown, Milan, today, 18 February.
Rome, 31 March 1940 – Milan, 18 February 2026
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 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.
RIP, Maestra!