TEXT BY MARCO BUSSAGLI

If it’s true as it’s true that, in our technological age, visibility on the Internet is one of the parameters with which to measure a person’s notoriety then Gaetano Castelli, with half a million pages dedicated to him, ranks among the loftiest, most representative figures of our homeland. Partly as a true intellectual, partly as a man of show business, Gaetano Castelli is one of the world’s most important scenographers and, for some specialized areas of this fascinating discipline such as television, he is certainly number one.

Tall and dapper, with snow-white hair, Castelli is the very image of the panache and intelligence of well-rounded Italian creativity. The kind of creativity capable of easily switching from set design to painting, from interior design to inventing the highly sophisticated first LED curtain, or cute animated puppets Pompeo and Carlotta (a pair of ducks) that brightened up the title credits and the set of [variety show] Fantastico Season 6, with presenters Lorella Cuccarini and Galyn Görg. Gaetano Castelli thus embodies that smart creativity that the rest of the planet envies.

What’s more, by dint of his long and happy career (he was also Director of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome for the three-year period 2006-2009, appointed by Minister Letizia Moratti on the strength of his reputation), he represents the rosiest aspect in the collective memory of Italians, that associated with the pleasure of watching a TV show in good company, in hoping that your Lottery ticket is the winner, or fantasizing about the curvaceous beauty of the hottest dancer  of the moment.