A designer, yes; a director – never were the words of Luchino Visconti when his protege and estranged lover Franco Zeffirelli emerged from the shadow of his patronage to pursue his own career as a director. They ignited a bitter rivalry which fuelled the raging ambition of the young Florentine stage designer whose subsequent work established him as one of the most profoundly influential cultural figures of the twentieth century. The last of the great post-war directors, Zeffirelli’s revolutionary ideas subverted all the accepted conventions of stage and screen, and drew the greatest artists of their time to work in his iconic productions: Olivier, Gielgud and Dench on stage; Callas, Sutherland, and Domingo in opera; Richard Burton, Mel Gibson, Glenn Close and Alec Guinness in film. Yet his formidable reputation became increasingly blighted by self-indulgence and excess. Zeffirelli has never before permitted a biography, anxious to preserve the mythology he created for his public image and immortalised in his autobiography. Published more than twenty years ago it was, until now, the only record of his life and work; but Zeffirelli’s self-portrait was as deceptively chimerical as anything he had created for the stage. Here, with unprecedented access to Zeffirelli and his colleagues, is a more accurate portrait of this mythical man.