Stage and film director, producer, set designer, painter, wartime partisan, politician, and gourmet chef Gian Franco Corsi Zeffirelli was one of the world’s most significant opera and theater directors during the second half of the 20^th century.

Particularly renowned for his lavish stage sets and film adaptations of Christian biblical stories and literary–especially British–works, he was born in the outskirts of Florence on February 12, 1923 after an affair between Florentine Alaide Garosi, a fashion designer, and Ottorino Corsi, a wool and silk dealer from Vinci and descendant of Leonardo da Vinci.  Since both were married to others, Alaide couldn’t transmit her surname or Corsi’s to Franco.