On Saturday afternoon at 6.00 pm in the “Marcello de Rossi” Hall of the “Juana Romani” Exhibition Center, an exhibition event dedicated to the career of Mrs. Lucia Mirisola will be inaugurated, who in addition to having been the life partner of maestro Luigi for over half a century Magni was the set designer and costume designer of his films. This is a small tribute to a great woman, who left us a notable heritage of sketches and projects that deserve every attention, because through their study it is possible to know and appreciate a way of making cinema now consigned to history.
They met at the “Menghi” Osteria in Via Flaminia in 1955. After an altercation, something triggered in them that quickly led them to live together and get married the following year. She already had some professional experience behind her, she had assisted her professor Pietro Gherardi on the costumes for “La Dolce Vita” by Federico Fellini, she had collaborated with Danilo Donati on the costumes for “La Grande Guerra” by Mario Monicelli. He instead worked at Ciampino as an air traffic controller, and took his first steps in the environment by collaborating with Willy Antuono on the drafting of a story for Antonio Racioppi.
Lucia, who despite her young age, was already a broad-minded girl, had well understood that her Luigi, the job of flight controller at Ciampino, was starting to be too tight for her, one evening during a phone call from her husband from the island of Ponza. , where he had been transferred after a violent altercation with a senior air force officer, seizes the opportunity and tells him: “leave everything and do what you like”. We were in the immediate post-war period.
Thus began their professional partnership which over the years became a real “workshop” where the master wrote, dusting off real life characters from the oblivion of history, creating others to lighten the narrative and she gave birth to them, dressing them and giving each one of them a character. In the foundation’s archives, a large amount of drawings, sketches and notes are preserved which testify to the important work carried out by Donna Lucia.
Precisely this important material will be exhibited in the exhibition which already enjoys the patronage of the National Association of Costume Designers and Set Designers and is awaiting the granting of the patronage of the Academy of Italian Cinema, Lucia having won two David di Donatello awards and three Nastro d’awards silver. Visitors will be able to take a journey through the various sets and see first-hand how Mrs. Mirisola set up her work and how much attention to detail she arrives at solutions from both the scenography and costume point of view.
Her stage clothes were made by the most important Italian tailors. In her youth Lucia formed a deep and sincere friendship with Umberto Tirelli, taking her first steps in his tailor’s shop, where she met a young dyer Onelio Millenotti who, thanks to her, began his career. path of the profession, becoming today, like Maurizio Millenotti, one of the greatest Italian costume designers.
Although almost ten years have passed since his death in Rome on 23 December 2017, his memory in the environment is always alive, full of gratitude on the part of those young assistants who are now established professionals who are a continuous source of anecdotes and precious cameos.
Thanks go to Dr. Piera De Tassis, president of the Academy of Italian Cinema, to maestro Carlo Poggioli, president of the National Association of Costume Designers and Set Designers and to Graziano Maraffa, president of the Historical Archive of Italian Cinema for granting patronage and to the administration municipality of Velletri for the logistical contribution.
