Milan โ The horizon at sunset, those โnotes of those who are about to leave lifeโthe preparations for the farewell: โIf I have to be honest I’ve already organized everything. With a lawyer and a notary. I can no longer avoid the truth or disguise it. It will be a few years. I really don’t want to face number 80. I have known melancholy and pain, never sadness. Today I feel light, almost happy. Blessed. And without fear. I have decided.” Diego Dalla Palma โ born in Enego in the Vicenza area on 24 November 1950 โ will turn 75 in a handful of days. But he is already counting the next ones. โI’m starting to feel that getting up from my chair, at the cinema or at the theatre, becomes a small humiliation: work. I have to change my underwear twice a day. The mind is no longer what it was before. Is it life? I saved my sick parents from poverty, as much as I could. But how do I deal with the ending? I have a little money that will allow me a few smiles; but victory will only be if I can go my own way. I have pride: I don’t want to depend on the Curia, the State, politicians, currents.”
Diego Dalla Palma
Who is Diego Dalla Palma
Table of Contents
- Who is Diego Dalla Palma
- “I will be alone, in a place of my heart, abroad. Everything is decided in the last monthโ
- Diego Dalla Palma and his childhood memories: meningitis, coma, the discovery of art
- The first time with a woman and the discovery of homosexuality
- โSex? โI’ve had it everywhere: telephone booths, public toilets, parksโ
- The Eighties and the nightmare of HIV: “I sought the risk. Maybe it attracted me”
- The priest’s abuse and the phone call after 35 years
- “I have never been lucky with the Church”
- โI prostituted myself five timesโ
The prophet of make-up, the make-up artist, a scholar of beauty, Diego Dalla Palma was a costume designer and set designer at the theatre, then his first leap onto TV with Corrado, Rai, an image laboratory and a line of cosmetics already in 1978 in Milan, author of manuals, esthete and commentator, philosopher of the look. And a writer. Dalla Palma is released in bookstores by Baldini+Castoldi with โEmotional Alphabetโ. He spoke about himself and the life that has been and will come in a long interview with Corriere della Sera.
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Diego Dalla Palma: “I have never had limits in sex. I forgave the priest who had abused me”
“I will be alone, in a place of my heart, abroad. Everything is decided in the last monthโ
The end of life, therefore. “A doctor will help me: he has prepared a compound for me. I will be alone, in a place of my heart, abroad. The last month is all decided. First I will spend a wonderful time: I will eat well, a good wine. I never get drunk, but I know that afterwards, to leave, it takes nothing. I engineered a non-theatrical, non-dramatic situation: reserved, calm. I will leave joyfully. What was prepared for me is very quick: two, three minutes. A liberationFinal and definitive solitude: a life choice, to end it. โI don’t want to warn anyonewould be a further request for acceptance. I have already forgiven everyone. Even the two companions I loved and who today don’t even allow me to mention them. Do you understand? In any case I, here, I no longer have boyfriends, brothers or childrenโ.
Diego Dalla Palma during the photocall of the musical โSapore di mareโ
Diego Dalla Palma and his childhood memories: meningitis, coma, the discovery of art
Tremendous childhood memories. “I experienced esoteric phenomena. When I came out of a coma, 6 years after meningitis, I didn’t want to see either mum or dad: I needed those figures floating in a lilac light that took me flying. I think it will happen again. Before the coma I had never drawn; later, I discovered art. How can I not believe that there is a form of energy?โ.
The first time with a woman and the discovery of homosexuality
The first first time. โGiuseppina came from Padua on holiday in Enego. We went in cyclamen: a few touches started, sometimes with the finale. In reality, however, I immediately felt the strong call of the male figure.” The epiphany of homosexuality. “In those years, as a teenager. The first time it happened inside our hut, on a night of furious storm, with a boy who came to us to work. Then I also had a relationship with his brother. A world opened up.”
โSex? โI’ve had it everywhere: telephone booths, public toilets, parksโ
And it was a world of sexual liberation, he tells al Courier. “I did it everywhere: telephone booths, public bathrooms, parks, abandoned construction sites, brothels, porn cinemas. But even after the most imaginative relationships, I felt the need to take shelter under a porch to feel the rain, or look at the stars. Before sleeping, I thought of the starry sky and the privilege of a soft pillow. My sexuality has always been accompanied by a strong spirituality.” The pinnacle? โAn orgy with nineteen people in a dormer room in VeniceCampo San Luca: nine women (three straight), ten men (five straight). A friend, Marcello – very handsome, had a relationship with Zeffirelli – organized the evening in a bar. โWe’ll stay close,โ he told me. โBetter, I replied.โ The narrow vineyard produces sweeter grapes.”
The Eighties and the nightmare of HIV: “I sought the risk. Maybe it attracted me”
The risk of contracting HIV? How did you deal with the fear of AIDS? โIn the morning I put a bottle of grappa, an antiseptic cream and a condom in my pocket: like this. I looked for the risk. Maybe it attracted me. But sex also brought me close to death. At home, in Milan, I was attacked for robbery by a Caribbean man with whom I was having a relationship. He stuck a knife in my throat, I wandered around the city in a blood-stained suit. I remained unconscious for three days. It was introduced to me by a person from television who is still very famous and loved today. Which he later denied. But I had the courage to report it.”
Diego Dalla Palma
The priest’s abuse and the phone call after 35 years
On the podcast “Vivo” he told about the priest who abused him in college. “Don Ugo. He hadn’t raped me with force but with his psyche, which is even worse. He offered me protection but in the meantime he caressed me between the legs. After 30-35 years my secretary tells me: I have a slightly asthmatic priest on the line who wants to talk to you… I immediately understand that it’s him. We chat for about twenty minutes, and in the end he asks me: โDo you love meโ? I was uncertain what to answer, then I answered yes, like a good Christian. I knew he was dying, I wanted to ease his passing, and for me he was like a ray of sunshine. But many have criticized me: in their opinion, people like this should never be forgiven.”
“I have never been lucky with the Church”
With another priest he was less indulgent, Dalla Palma. “At the boarding school in Bassano. When he saw me he said: I smell manure. Today I hate him more than Father Ugo, because he humiliated me in front of everyone. One day I was in my room, on the first floor, and I saw him pass downstairs, in the courtyard. I pushed down a pot of geraniums that missed him by about a foot. The humiliation was so strong that the shame of ending up in juvenile detention was less burdensome than what I suffered. I have never been lucky with the Church. A priest did not want an Alpine choir to sing The Lord of the Peaks in church for my Alpine father. At my mother’s funeral another priest didn’t want a soprano I had already hired. And a group of nuns held my mother prisoner, locked in a room, tied to the bed and stunned by drugs.”
โI prostituted myself five timesโ
Dalla Palma also said he had prostituted himself in the past. โFive times. The first was when I was in college, I masturbated someone and he started screaming. I got so scared that I ran away without even receiving the money. Another to buy my father a hat, the third to give my mother a lipstick. In Milan when I hadn’t eaten for two days, and always in Milan with a Rai official.”
