PORTO SAN PAOLO, July 20 – Actress and director Sonia Bergamasco, sporting short hair and a dancer’s slender frame, maintains an unbroken artistic dialogue with the theater that shaped her since her youth at Milan’s Piccolo Teatro. “Theater isn’t a comfort zone—it’s a permanent laboratory of ideas and an expressive mine,” she told ANSA at the Tavolara festival, where she appears as director of *Duse the Greatest* and performer in *Il Nibbio*.
Bergamasco recently debuted in Sophocles’ *Electra* under Roberto Andò’s direction in Syracuse and Pompeii, a role for which she cut her hair. Post-summer, she will direct and star in *The Princess of Lampedusa*—adapted from Ruggero Cappuccio’s novel—portraying Beatrice Mastrogiovanni Tasca di Cutò, mother of *The Leopard* author Tomasi di Lampedusa. The Campania Festival production features Bergamasco alone on stage, embodying the matriarch navigating 1943 Palermo’s bombed ruins while “recounting the passions, failures, and follies that defined a generation.”
Her cinematic pursuits continue beyond her documentary debut *Duse the Greatest*. “I’m developing a new directing project, open to fiction or documentary,” she revealed. When asked if her “Duse fever” has waned, Bergamasco countered: “It intensifies. I’ve barely begun understanding her—a trailblazer who imposed her vision beyond directors’ constraints. Comparing us is futile; we each inhabit our own era.” She humorously attributed the documentary to being “forced by endless family discussions about Duse,” and now anticipates Pietro Marcello’s upcoming film *Duse*.
Married to actor Fabrizio Gifuni, with whom she shares two daughters—one a photography talent, the other studying acting at Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia—Bergamasco emphasized their collaborative dynamic. “Ours is an all-consuming work-life without competition. Fabrizio and I respect our differences and consult on major decisions,” she noted. The family attended Tavolara together, where Gifuni stars in Francesca Comencini’s *Il tempo che ci vuole*.