Italian director Franco Zeffirelli dies at 96

Italian director Franco Zeffirelli died at the age of 96, reports the Italian media.

The star originally from Florence notably directed Elizabeth Taylor in the 1967 film Taming of the Shrew and Dame Judi Dench on stage at Romeo and Juliet.

Italian media said Zeffirelli had died as a result of a long illness that had worsened in recent months.

The nominee for two Oscar nominations also served in the Italian Senate for two terms as a member of Silvio Berlusconi's For Silvia Italia party.

He is perhaps best known to many as director of the adaptation of Romeo and Juliet in 1968, starring Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, then unknown.

He has been seen by generations of Shakespearian theater students.

Illegitimate son of a trader, his mother gave him the family name "Zeffiretti" – which means "little breeze" – which was misspelled on his birth certificate.

The original meaning came from a Mozart opera – and Zeffirelli himself would become a prolific operatic creator, staging over 120 of his talents during his career.

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"Franco Zeffirelli, one of the greatest men of culture in the world, died this morning," tweeted Dario Nardella, mayor of Florence. "Good bye my dear Maestro, Florence will never forget you."

Zeffirelli first studied architecture, but he said that after seeing Henry V (1944) Laurence Olivier, he was inspired to make a career in the theater.

In 1945, he began working as a decorator at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence and focused on theater throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

At the request of the pope, Zeffirelli organized in 1970 "Missa solemnis" in honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Beethoven.

His first film was Shakespeare's adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew. Although initially planned to perform two Italian actors, it was heavily funded by Hollywood couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor – who eventually took on two main roles.

Another notable adaptation of the bard's plays would occur in the 1990s in Hamlet – starring Mel Gibson in the lead role, with Glenn Close and Helena Bonham Carter among the lead actors.