MILAN - Carla Fracci, the ballet dancer, actress, and cultural “point of reference”, has died aged 84.

  She died on Thursday in Milan, the city in which she was born and spent most of her life, after a long battle with cancer.

  Fracci was one of the best known and critically acclaimed ballet dancers of the 20th century, performing on the biggest global stages, most notably Milan’s La Scala. 

  She was born on August 20, 1936, to a tram driver father and factory worker mother, and joined La Scala’s academy aged just 10, after having spent the war with relatives in the countryside.

  She admitted to hating her early years at the academy before before seeing the British ballerina Margot Fonteyn perform in Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty”. "That's when a spark ignited, a spark that became a fire and that has never left me," she told Corriere della Sera in 2008.

  She graduated from the academy at 18 before coming the theatre’s prima ballerina aged only 22. This began her lifelong relationship with the theatre, last performing there in 2000. In January this year she was invited back to give a masterclass on “Giselle” - the role which arguably earned her reputation when she first performed it in London in 1959.

  During her almost 50 year career, she performed with some of the biggest names in classical dance, including Rudolf Nureyev, Erik Bruhn and Mikhail Baryshnikov, and in her later years became a dance director and choreographer. 

  She aimed to spread ballet through a country which she saw as traditionally dominated by opera, becoming director of the ballet companies of Naples’ Teatro San Carlo (1980s), the Verona Arena (1996-1997) and Teatro dell'Opera di Roma (from 2000-2010).

  Italian President Sergio Mattarella said in statement, "Carla Fracci has honoured our country with her elegance and artistic commitment.” He praised the “extraordinary artistic and human qualities that made her one of the greatest classical dancers of our time.”

  “She leaves us in amazement, on tiptoe like Giselle, a spirit that remains with us, filling the ballrooms, the stage and our hearts,″ said La Scala’s ballet director, Manuel Legris. “We feel a great void that, at the same time, makes us feel full and rich in all her history — which is the history of ballet — and privileged to have shared her art.”

  A statement from La Scala after her death read, “Carla Fracci was a cardinal figure in the history of dance and that of La Scala, but also a point of reference for the city of Milan and Italian culture.”

  Carla Fracci died on May 27, 2021, aged 84, and is survived by her husband of 57 years, Beppe Menegatti, and their son Francesco Menegatti.

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