The D’Amico family ranks on top of the cultural élite originating form Torricella Peligna thanks to Silvio D’Amico, a reformer of Italian drama and the founder of the National Academy of Dramatic Art, of the Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo (Encyclopedia of Performing Arts) and the author of the History of dramatic art, which are considered as the Bible of the stage. Silvio was the great nephew of Domenico D’Amico, master of arts, who was born in Torricella Peligna in 1819 and, as you can read on the plaque in front of his house in Via Roma, “he honoured his name and his native town, left many witnesses of his activity in Rome where he promoted and encouraged the presence of artists from Abruzzo”.

Silvio d’Amico was born in Rome on 3 February 1887 where his father Fedele moved from Torricella to join his uncle Domenico; his mother Filomena Viola was from Rome and came from a family of intellectuals. He studied at university and got a degree in Law and also attended the faculty of Letters and Philosophy. In 1911 he married Elsa Minù (and they had three sons: Fedele, a composer and music reviewer, Marcello and Alessandro) and started his activity as a militant reviewer while he also debuted as playwright with a text from holy laude of the XIII and XIV century, “Mistero della Natività, Passione e Resurrezione di Nostro Signore”: a rare and philologic example of religious drama.

The Academy was founded in 1936 and he was its Director, while keeping his daily contact with the world of theatre, in fact he published “Il teatro non deve morire” (Theather shall never die) and also drama chronicles for several magazines, like Scenario and Rivista italiana del dramma. A friend of Pirandello, D’Amico felt more and more the need to organize critically and chronologically his researches on drama and thus started to work on his main work: “Storia del teatro drammatico” after which he wrote another unique work: ”Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo”. He also wrote a novel titled “Le finestre di Piazza Navona”. Silvio D’Amico died in Rome on 1° April 1955.

[Credits | Text: Ottavio Di Renzo De Laurentis | Translation: Mirella Rapa | Voice and music: Studio Qreate | Photo: Laura Di Biase]