Theatre and film director Giorgio Ferrara has been chosen by Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli to head Spoleto's Festival of Two Worlds.
The Festival of Two Worlds was created almost 50 years ago as a summer music and opera event in the central Umbrian city of Spoleto.
It has since expanded to included dance, drama, visual arts and roundtable discussions.
Born in Rome in 1947, Ferrara has been head of the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris since 2003 and in 2005 he became the chairman of the association of foreign cultural institutes in the French capital.
After taking a degree in liberal arts and philosophy at Rome University, Ferrara earned a diploma at the Silvio D'Amico National Academy of Dramatic Arts.
He served as assistant director under Luca Ronconi and the late Luchino Visconti, for whom he worked in the film Ludwig and the theatrical presentation of Harold Pinter's Old Times.
Ferrara has directed numerous plays by both classic and contemporary playwrights and he currently has a play on stage in Rome based on the 1978 kidnapping and murder of Christian Democrat statesman Aldo Moro.
He won a Davide di Donatello prize, Italy's Oscar, for his film Un Cuore Semplice (A Simple Heart) which was based on a work by Gustav Flaubert and scripted by the late Cesare Zavattini.
Ferrara lives between Rome and Paris with his wife, the actress Adriana Asti.
Ferrara's official title at the Festival of Two Worlds will be coordinating chairman and he will have responsibility for artistic direction.
The outgoing festival director, Francis Menotti, will become honorary president of the festival and its foundation, both of which were created by his late adoptive father, the composer Gian Carlo Menotti, in 1958.
Giancarlo Menotti died last February at the age of 95.
