VENICE.- The first exhibition dedicated to Lyda Borelli, the great actress and avant-garde woman of the early twentieth century, is being held on the second floor of the Palazzo Cini from 1 September to 15 November 2017.

The exhibition presents the results of an extensive study of the actress’s theatre career, already brought together in the book entitled “Il Teatro di Lyda Borelli”

In the year of its tenth anniversary, the Fondazione Cini Institute of Theatre and Opera is celebrating the figure of the great actress Lyda Borelli (La Spezia, 1887 – Rome, 1959) - Vittorio Cini’s first wife - with a monographic exhibition. She was one of the most fascinating Italian actresses of the early twentieth century, an Art Nouveau icon and avant-garde woman. Lyda Borelli: A Leading Lady of the 20th Century, curated by Maria Ida Biggi, brings back to light the actress’s theatre career, from her big successes on Italian and world stages through to her cinema triumph, with rare archive documents and an extraordinary gallery of photos. The exhibition will be open to the public in Palazzo Cini in San Vio, in partnership with Assicurazioni Generali, from 1 September to 15 November 2017.

Lyda Borelli: A Leading Lady of the 20th Century presents the results of an extensive study into the actress’s theatre career, already brought together in the book Il Teatro di Lyda Borelli, edited by Maria Ida Biggi and Marianna Zannoni (Fratelli Alinari, Florence 2017). During the months of the exhibition, the cinema series entitled Lyda Borelli: Film Diva (4, 19, 21 and 22 September; 10 November) will be presented in the Teatro La Fenice, the Casa del Cinema – Videoteca Pasinetti and the Ateneo Veneto. The film Rapsodia Satanica (1917), with the music by Pietro Mascagni played live, will be screened during the first date, on Monday 4 September 2017, in the Sale Apollinee at the Teatro La Fenice.

The exhibition at the Palazzo Cini reconstructs the life of Lyda Borelli, both as actress and inspiring muse of the leading photographers and artists of the early twentieth century, by means of a rich selection of period photos and original, unpublished materials. It not only traces her artistic career, but also provides an overall picture of her personality: the actress perfectly embodied the modernity of the early century. Her image as an emancipated woman, built up through the characters she played, but also on the strength of her character in real life, helped establish her as an Art Nouveau icon and avant-garde woman. Sponsor of the jupe-culotte, the first form of women’s trousers, Lyda was also one of the first women to experience the thrill of flying, beside the greatest airmen of the day, and one of the few women of her time to appear at the wheel of a car.

Born to artist parents in 1887, Borelli began her career at the very early age of fourteen, appearing in Francesco Pasta and Virginia Reiter’s Drammatica Compagnia Italiana in 1901. In 1903 she joined the Compagnia Drammatica Italiana Talli-Gramatica-Calabresi and, under the guidance of Virgilio Talli, began to win public and critical acclaim. In 1905 she obtained the role of ‘first young actress’ and performed alongside Eleonora Duse playing the part of Fernanda in the play of the same name by Victorien Sardou. In 1909 she became first actress and signed a lucrative contract for the next three years with the new Compagnia Drammatica Italiana directed by Ruggero Ruggeri, managing to take seventy productions on stage in a single year. In 1912 Lyda Borelli became head of the Compagnia Italiana Gandusio-Borelli-Piperno, directed by Flavio Andò, and in 1915 joined the new Compagnia, directed by Ermete Novelli, with which she took Le nozze dei Centauri by Sem Benelli on stage for its premier performance at the Teatro Carignano in Turin. The Italian theatre went through a difficult period between 1916 and 1918 due to the Great War; numerous playwrights and theatre men left for the front and entered into passionate correspondence with Lyda Borelli. In 1918 the actress married the count Vittorio Cini and left the stage to devote herself to family life.

Part of the exhibition is dedicated to photography, which in those years was the main means of conveying an artist’s image. Photos by some of the leading photographers of the time may be admired here: Mario Nunes Vais, Arturo Varischi and Giovanni Artico, Emilio Sommariva and Attilio Badodi, for whom Borelli posed both in stage costume and showing off her famous outfits. The Venice dressmaking studio Atelier Nicolao has made up three of the actress’s costumes for the exhibition: that of Favetta, for the premier of La Figlia di Iorio by Gabriele D’Annunzio, that of the protagonist of Oscar Wilde’s Salomè, worn during the famous ‘dance of the seven veils’, and a middle-class dress that shows the artist’s elegance in everyday life.

The exhibition will also feature rare, unpublished stereoscopic images on glass plates, made with photographic equipment owned by Borelli herself. This three-dimensional journey in discovery of the actress’s private life and her South American tour (1909-1910) can be seen by the public thanks to the video screenings presented by Umberto Saraceni (Visual Lab). Various albums with precious press cuttings that document her successes both in Italy and around the world further enrich the story.

One section of Lyda Borelli: A Leading Lady of the 20th Century is dedicated to Borelli’s pictorial image. The painting by the artist Ettore de Maria Bergler, one of the main representatives of Sicilian Art Nouveau, and that of Maria Vinca showing Lyda Borelli in a family dimension with her children Giorgio and Mynna, take on a special role among the portraits by celebrated exponents of Italian Belle Époque painting.
The exhibition is completed with a video made by the Fondazione Cineteca Italiana of Milan: a closer look at Lyda Borelli’s film performances, fundamental in constructing her image as an artist.

Lyda Borelli: A Leading Lady of the 20th Century is being held in agreement with and supported by the heirs of Lyda Borelli and in association with SIAE – Biblioteca e Raccolta Teatrale del Burcardo, Rome, ICCD – Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, Rome, Fratelli Alinari. Fondazione per la Storia della Fotografia, Florence and the Fondazione Casa Lyda Borelli, Bologna.

The exhibition will be presented in other venues in Italy and abroad with the assistance of Fratelli Alinari, Florence.