Pécs2010 Management - Artistic Board

Giorgio Pressburger

Giorgio Pressburger was born in Budapest and has been living in Italy since 1965. He graduated from the Academy of Dramatic arts in Rome as a director and then studied biology at the University of Bologna from 1967 to 1971.
From 1967 to 1988 he worked as a director in the radio and television where he adapted the works of several hundred renowned authors. He received several prizes for this work, including the Italy Prize in 1972, 1975 and 1988, and was awarded a musical prize in Hungary in 1975.

He also worked extensively in prose theatre, wrote several play-scripts and directed numerous plays all over Italy. His several decade-long work in the theatre was recognised in 1962 by a prize awarded by the Italian Drama Institute, by the Pirandello Prize in 1974, the Flaiano Prize in 1995 and the Riccione Prize for the Theatre in 2001 for staging the „Venetian Rabbi.”

He was awarded the Randone Prize for his life-work in 2007. He translated the works of Heinrich von Kleist, Georg Kaiser, Karl Valentin, Árpád Göncz into Italian and adapted Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, Kodály's János Háry and István Örkény's Macskajáték (Cat's Game) into Italian.

He also has a lot of experience as a director in the field of lyrical works: he staged works in the La Fenice Theatre, the opera in Rome, the Scala in Milan, the Grand Theatre in Bologna, the opera in Vienna, the Verdi Opera Theatre in Trieste and theatres in Florence, Verona, Spoleto and Taormina. A short list of plays directed by him include: Mozart's The Magic Flute, Verdi's Macbeth, Tchaikovsky's Queen of Hearts, Strauss' The Bat and Rossini's The Barber of Sevilla. As a director he made occasional tours into the world of operetta and staged Imre Kálmán's Bayadére and Strauss' The Bat.

In 1977 he directed Pier Paolo Pasolini's Calderon for the Italian Television and produced several short films as well. His works were recognised by the international critical prize FIPRESCI in 1982, and in the same year he received the Golden Globe Prize, the Special Prize of the International Media in 1990 and the Special Pier Paolo Pasolini Prize in 1993.

He has organised several large-scale cultural programmes and events. He was the founder of the event called MITTELFEST, an annual event held in Cividale di Fruiuli with the participation of 17 Central European and Balkan countries and acted as its director between 1991 and 2003. From 1995 to 1998 he was in charge of cultural affairs at the local government of Spoledo, for which he was awarded the Prize of the City of Spoledo in 2001.

In 1998 the Italian foreign minister appointed him director of the Italian Institute in Budapest, where he worked until 2002. He initiated and organised several Italian-Hungarian events in this capacity, among others the series of dancing events called „Viva Verdi“ jointly organised by the Italian Foreign Ministry and the Hungarian Ministry of Cultural Goods.

In 2007 he established the Castle Theatre Festival in Trieste, and the programmes organised by the theatre mobilised every theatrical institution in the region and even in Slovenia.

From 1968 to 1976 he taught directing and performing art at the National Artistic Academy in Rome, gave courses on ancient drama in Lecce, then taught dramaturgy at the University of Szeged between 2000 and 2002. He received a honoris causa degree in humanities from the University of Szeged in 2004 and was appointed visiting professor at the University of Cambridge. At present he teaches the history of theatrical scenery and writing radio scripts at the University of Udine.

He is the author of several novels, short stories and essays, many of which were published in Hungarian, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Czech and Japanese. He received numerous Italian and international recognitions for his published volumes. He continues to publish in the cultural columns of Corriere della Sera, Avvenire and several other American, English and Australian literary journals.