«Un ritrovo di poeti alla ricerca del nuovo». Luigi Rasi, Gabriellino d’Annunzio e la Regia Scuola di recitazione di Firenze

The artistic path of young Gabriellino d’Annunzio, undertaken against his father’s will, has a decisive starting point with the frequentation of the Royal School of Acting in Florence between 1904 and 1905. The director of the School is the Italian actor and man of letters Luigi Rasi, with whom d’Annunzio himself, with the mediation of Eleonora Duse, has different artistic collaborations from the debut of Gioconda in 1899 to the rehearsals of Francesca da Rimini in 1901. Gabriellino takes part in the ‘artistic lectures’ directed by Rasi, whose teachings constitute an important trace in his future theatrical career. Two letters from Rasi to d’Annunzio and the correspondence of Gabriellino with the other students of the School, along with their memories, allow to understand more clearly the cultural and literary value of a theatre that was first of all, as later defined by Marino Moretti, «a meeting of poets in the search of the new».