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ROME — Maurizio Costanzo, for many years one among Italy’s main prime-time speak present hosts and most outstanding tv journalists, who had been dwelling beneath police safety ever since he took on the Sicilian Mafia in 1993, died on Friday at a clinic in Rome. He was 84.
He had not too long ago undergone colon surgical procedure and was recovering in a personal clinic, Elisabetta Soldati, a publicist for his household mentioned. The reason for dying was not disclosed.
Earlier than his funeral Monday, he lay in state for 2 days in Rome’s Campidoglio, metropolis corridor, an honor reserved for high-ranking officers and Rome-based celebrities, the place tons of of individuals from the present enterprise and politics paid their respects.
Over greater than 50 years within the tv enterprise, Mr. Costanzo’s pleasant and, on the identical time, piercing journalistic type remodeled Italy’s as soon as stiff speak reveals into energetic, casual affairs that combined politically delicate matters, social commentary, gossip and private revelations. Tv critics praised him because the inventor of latest Italian tv.
“No person was in a position to interview and fire up freewheeling dialog like he did,” Aldo Grasso, the tv critic for the day by day newspaper Corriere della Sera, wrote in a column on Friday. “In a few years, he adopted completely different formulation; every one among them generated a section for a lot of latest tv.”
In one of the crucial widespread applications, “The Maurizio Costanzo Present,” which aired in numerous codecs from 1982 to 2022, friends would be part of him on a theater stage, just a few at a time, sitting in a horseshoe formation, whereas he bounced among the many friends. On anybody evening, the friends would possibly embody politicians, actors, singers and varied celebrities, who interacted and, at instances, argued with each other, in addition to with members of the viewers.
He had a expertise for locating quirky personalities, a few of whom turned fixtures on Italian tv, whereas others turned politicians. He opened the door to performers who had historically been shut out. In 1999, for instance, he invited the drag queen Platinette, the stage title of Mauro Coruzzi, to look on his present, paving the way in which for Platinette’s nationwide success in a conservative nation that also limits civil rights for homosexual {couples}.
And he delivered to the nationwide stage largely unknown professionals whose type had captured his curiosity.
“I’m one of many 1000’s of characters found by him,” Vittorio Sgarbi, an artwork critic and at the moment Italy’s deputy tradition minister, mentioned on Italian tv on Friday.
Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, saluted Mr. Costanzo on Twitter as an “icon of journalism and tv, who was in a position to narrate troublesome years with braveness and professionalism.”
In 1993, Mr. Costanzo was almost killed after main a marketing campaign in opposition to the Sicilian Mafia on his present. He and a colleague who labored for the nationwide broadcaster RAI had broadcast a sequence of episodes in regards to the mafia throughout which Mr. Costanzo burned a T-shirt that mentioned “Mafia, Made in Italy.” He interviewed the sister-in-law of a mobster to steer her to surrender the Mafia.
He later mentioned he was informed by prosecutors that the marketing campaign had angered Salvatore Riina, then the top of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, who ordered Mr. Costanzo’s homicide, directing minions to plant a car-bomb close to the theater the place he labored in 1993.
However that evening, by pure luck, he employed a unique automobile to choose him up from the Parioli theater in Rome, the place the present was broadcast. The mobsters, confused by the completely different automobile, took an additional second to detonate the 70 kilos of explosives packed in a close-by automobile and missed them.
“It was a miracle,” Mr. Costanzo mentioned in a TV interview years later. “No person acquired killed.”
Since that incident, he mentioned, he had been dwelling beneath fixed police safety.
Maurizio Costanzo was born in Rome on Aug. 28, 1938, the one youngster of Ugo Costanzo, an worker on the Transportation Ministry, and Jole De Toni, a homemaker. His father died when Maurizio was 16. He thought-about his father’s dying a “theft,” he mentioned, including that he stored an image of him subsequent to his mattress and considered him day by day.
As a reporter for his highschool newspaper in Rome, he as soon as sneaked out of college to fulfill with Indro Montanelli, a journalist from Corriere della Sera whom Mr. Costanzo thought-about a mentor.
He by no means attended faculty and began writing for a night day by day in Rome on the age of 17, however he rapidly moved to writing journal articles, radio applications, screenplays and books. He wrote common columns for a number of weekly magazines and newspapers devoted to point out enterprise, but in addition for nationwide dailies.
Within the Nineteen Seventies, he hosted one of many first speak reveals on Italian tv, “Bontà Loro” (“To Their Personal Kindness”). Nevertheless it was with the “Maurizio Costanzo Present” a decade later that he turned a nationwide star.
Mr. Costanzo branched out from tv now and again to write down or co-write screenplays, together with for the 1977 hit movie “A Particular Day” by the filmmaker Ettore Scola. In 1966, he wrote the lyrics for “Se Telefonando,” with music by Ennio Morricone. Sung by Mina, one among Italy’s most beloved singers, the track hit the highest of the charts. He additionally taught TV and radio journalism at two Italian universities.
He’s survived by his spouse, Maria De Filippi, a lawyer who turned a well known tv anchorwoman; three kids, Camilla, Saverio and Gabriele; and 4 grandchildren.
As his coffin left a church in downtown Rome on Monday afternoon, loudspeakers performed the theme track of his tv present as followers lined the streets, many weeping.
“Maurizio’s biggest high quality was humbleness,” mentioned Giorgio Assumma, Mr. Costanzo’s lawyer and buddy for 50 years. “Folks understood it and favored him for that.”
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