I
t figures that the holiday home of Italian actor Luca
Barbareschi and his interior designer wife, Elena
Monorchio, is likened to a theatrical production.
Located on the Aeolian island of Filicudi, geographically
near yet distinctly removed from Sicily, the combined
houses on the couple’s property tell a story of historical
and local intrigue, set against a cinematic backdrop.
Throughout Monorchio has created areas of mise en scène,
but never to the point of upstaging. “I was careful to show off
the scenography as discreetly as possible,” she says, “because
here nature is the real protagonist.”
Monorchio’s mind was full of theatrics when she arrived in
Filicudi to project-manage the interiors of their newly
renovated house. She and Barbareschi had just completed “the
most exhilarating and emotion-packed experience of [her] life”
— the five-month restoration of Rome’s Eliseo theatres, which
the couple have bought after four years of management.
Despite Barbareschi’s associations with celluloid (he starred
in the notorious 1980 horror film Cannibal Holocaust and is
producing an upcoming Roman Polanski film), he has spent his
life on stage. He played Salieri in Polanski’s stage version of
Amadeus in Milan, and just finished portraying Cyrano de
Bergerac at his newly acquired Eliseo theatre.
Between productions (he also owns a multimedia company),
Barbareschi has frequented Filicudi for 30 years, with his first
wife and their three daughters, and now with Monorchio and
their children, Maddalena, 8, and Francesco, 6. The island and
its traditional cubetti homes — modular cubes of local stone —
have long been a source of fascination for the actor, and
he managed to buy a group of three cubettis 13 years ago. ››