2023-08-17 21:05:39
by PAOLO CONTI
August 19 will be the thirtieth anniversary of the death of the journalist and presenter. Work at Corriere as a special correspondent from 1976 to 2000 and then TV with various programs. The last Atlantis on La7
Andrea Purgatori died a month ago. A sudden, cruel farewell, very difficult to metabolize for anyone who has appreciated it in work and in personal life. These days many memories are linked, and rightly so, to his work for La7, to the passion he poured on his television creature, Atlantis, much loved by viewers. The director of that TV network, Andrea Salerno, in an interview given to Marianna Aprile for Oggi, claims that in the Purgatori program he had found the perfect synthesis of his ability as a screenwriter, his journalistic talent and his desire to be a public figure.
So Atlantis as the culmination of a long professional journey. For this reason it is equally right to recall the first Purgatori, signature and special correspondent of Corriere della Sera from 1976 to 2000, the year in which he left the newspaper to devote himself more freely to screenplays, essays, the many professional bets (he would return to collaborate years later).
The debut piece, on February 6, 1976, announces its field of action: a thwarted attack on the Egyptian embassy in Rome which however turns out to be a trail of terrorism linked to Gaddafi. Then immediately interviews and investigations into the Pasolini crime, the arrest of the famous French criminal Albert Bergamelli, the many kidnappings of the period, MSI deputy Sandro Saccucci and the events of the Sezze shooting in May 1976, the salmonella epidemic at the Rome Polyclinic. But there are forays into color (the auditions for the casting of the film Porci con le ali by Paolo Pietrangeli from the novel by Marco Lombardo Radice and Lidia Ravera), the shootings in the streets of Rome in 1977, the death of Giorgiana Masi. Rapid attacks, anti-rhetorical, not complacent (for Masi’s funeral: They greeted Giorgiana for the last time in silence. Fists raised to the sky, red carnations thrown by the hundreds towards the coffin). You also deal with the Pecorelli murder, to which I will dedicate one of the latest episodes of Atlantis on 28 June. A continuous gymnasium of true journalism, varied in themes as always happens in newspapers with leading reporters.
The debut helps to understand the roots, the choices, the style and above all an itinerary strongly desired and planned with determination. In June 1980 the tragic chapter of the massacre of Ustica opens, of the DC9 Itavia crashed in the Mediterranean after having broken into two sections, of the 81 victims, of the drama of the family members who demand truth and also justice (Purgatori will never abandon them). the story of his professional life (Ustica / Purgatori, almost a synonym, his last piece as a correspondent for Corriere della Sera on 28 September 2000 in fact on Ustica).
But Purgatori was sent to Iran, in the years in which he obtained a visa and identified reliable sources (the war with Iraq, his arrival at the Basra front in January 1987, the interviews with Iraqi prisoners in Teheran, the political religious leaders of theocracy with exponents of the caliber of Rafsanjani and Montazeri) was extremely complex. Years of correspondence, analyses, connections with Italian diplomacy (Giulio Andreotti protagonist). Tales from Algeria. Libya with Gaddafi above all for the link with the tragedy of Ustica, but also for the centrality in the arena of the Middle East. And so much more. Scrolling through the archival materials, one finds an immense amount of work: accurate, respectful of the sources, meticulous in the reports. the Andrea Purgatori to the Corriere della Sera, one of the roots of his identity.
August 17, 2023 (change August 18, 2023 | 01:14)
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