Emanuele Luzzati


Emanuele Luzzati was an Italian painter, production designer, illustrator, film director and animator. He was nominated for Academy Awards for two of his short films, La gazza ladra and Pulcinella.

Biography

He was born in Genoa and turned to drawing in 1938 when, as a son of a Jew, his academic studies were interrupted by the introduction of the Fascist racial laws. He moved to Switzerland with his family and studied in Lausanne, where he obtained his degree at the local École des Beaux-Arts. He designed his first production of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in 1944, a collaboration with his friends Alessandro Fersen, Aldo Trionfo and Guido Lopez. He returned to Italy after the war.
His first work as an animator was the short film I paladini di Francia, together with Giulio Gianini, in 1960.
He provided designs for the London Festival Ballet, the Chicago Opera House, the Vienna Staatsoper and the Glyndebourne Festival, including several Mozart productions and Verdi's Macbeth produced by Michael Hadjimischev in 1972.
Luzzati was interested in tarot symbolism, which he used in scenographies for Fabrizio de André concerts in the 1990s.
One of Luzzati's books was, in the English-language version, Ronald and the Wizard Calico, a fairy tale in verse.
The Picture Lion paperback edition is a paperback imprint of the Hutchinson Junior Books edition, which credits the English translation to Hutchinson Junior Books, and cites Ugo Mursia Editore 1962 as the Italian language first published version.
This story is an ancient one / That minstrels often tell,
Of battles, love and treachery, / And magic things as well.
The story of Ronald and the Wizard Calico, is about the knight, brave Captain Ronald, his valiant charger called Fred, and Ronald's golden knights, who are the good guys, guarding the lovely Rosalie in their castle fort.
Nearby, in a “lovely lake” Wizard Calico makes his magic, and flies around on the back of his magic bluebird.
However, “wicked green knights in green / Crept up and hid behind a hill”. They plan to kidnap Rosalie and take her to become “the reluctant wife of Sultan Suhlimann”.
Alas, Gano, a wicked traitor in Ronald's fort, makes his own magic, creating the illusion of another castle on a nearby hill: “At all the open windows there / Stood many lovely girls / With blue eyes and with hair which hung / In long and golden curls. / The damsels called to Ronald's knights / And asked round for tea, / So all the army marched away / And left poor Rosalie”.
Gano opens the gates to the green knights, and rush away with Rosalie. “No doubt you'll have forgotten now / The Wizard Calico, / But luckily for everyone / He saw the traitor go.”
The plot thickens. More magic spells are cast; battle ensues; villains are brought to justice – and “Then Ronald married Rosalie, / As all had hoped he would. / So this tale has a happy end, / As all the best tales should... / So there it is, a stirring tale, / As at the start I said. / But now it's time to close the book / And quietly go to bed”.
The attractive and amusing illustrations, by Emanuele Luzatti, resemble a Punch and Judy booth and puppets, as if drawn and coloured by Georges Rouault, with a black-edged folk-naïve style and stained-glass window-like colours.
The third-last page in the original Italian is:
Viva Rinaldo, il vincitore, / viva la sposa sua, Biancofiore, / viva Ricardo e i paladini, / viva la chioccia col suoi pulcini, / viva il catello che non c’e piu, / viva il mago Urluberlu.
Abbasso i mori, abasso il sultano, morte, supplizio, tortura per Gano, chi vuol esser lieto sia, larga la foglia, lunga la via.
The original Italian story was also in simple rhymed verse, and seems to have been about a beautiful maiden called Biancofiore – Whiteflower, or Blanche – and her brave hero, Captain Rinaldo, and Ricardo and his paladins – the term used for Christian knights engaged in Crusades against the Saracens and Moore. Against these good people are the wicked Moors – North African Muslims and Arabs – and their Sultan. The catalyst for victory seems to have been the magician called Urlubulu, who may have had help from a mother hen and her chickens, possibly also magic. Clearly the English translators, using the original illustrations, and the basic rhyme patterns, have slightly simplified the plot, and eliminated the Christians-versus-Muslim-Moors conflict, replacing it with gold versus green.
In other words, we have a retelling, or re-imagining of one of the legends of Roland, the famous French knight, or paladin, who fought the Moors, as they were known, in Spain, and, famously, stopped the conquest of France, as recorded in the verse saga, The Song of Roland, or La Chanson de Roland, and the legendary hero of the Orlando stories, such as Orlando Furioso, retold, or re-imagined for children.

Works in English

Books in English