Mario Lanfranchi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Lanfranchi

Mario Lanfranchi (born 30 June 1927) is an Italian film, theatre and television director, screenwriter, producer, collector and actor.

Lanfranchi was born in Parma. After receiving a degree at the Drama Academy (Accademia dei Filodrammatici) of Milan in the early 1950s, he was hired by Sergio Pugliese at RAI, at the onset of Italian television. He was the first to bring opera to the small screen, in 1956, with Madama Butterfly, by Giacomo Puccini, which introduced to a wide public Anna Moffo, at that time an unknown American soprano, who became his wife for 17 years. In 1967 he began his career as a film director with the western movie Death Sentence. He currently lives in a 16th-century villa in Santa Maria del Piano outside Parma.