The ANNOTICO Report

Elizabeth Spencer wrote nine novels, including "The Voice at the Back Door"
(1956), "and any number of short stories, but  "The Light in the Piazza" a
novella, became her best-known work.

Spencer had been a Guggenheim Fellow in Italy in the early 1950s when she
met and married her English-born husband. The Mississippian has recently
settled in Montreal after five years in Italy.

The central characters are an American mother and daughter and an Italian
father and son. The parents' different cultural perspectives on the young
people's romance "is rather crucial to the story," Spencer said. The story
succeeds, in her view, "because I'd gotten to know a great deal about
Italian manners and the way Italians differ from Americans in their
perceptions of things."

Newsday
By Blake Green
Staff Writer
April 17, 2005

When Elizabeth Spencer wrote "The Light in the Piazza," the romantic
novella that inspired the new musical of the same name at Lincoln Center,
she was a Mississippian who had recently settled in Montreal after five
years in Italy.

The plot was suggested by her husband from a scenario he had witnessed in
an Italian restaurant: "There was this American girl who had a steady
flirtation with a man who worked in the dining room. She was a little bit
odd, and John said if they'd been on the same social level there might have
been a romance."

Shards of this remain - the young woman is retarded, the young man
flirtatious - but the incident that provokes a story "is not usually
recognizable in the end," said the 84-year-old widow, who lives in Chapel
Hill, N.C. The central characters are an American mother and daughter and
an Italian father and son. The parents' different cultural perspectives on
the young people's romance "is rather crucial to the story," Spencer said.
The story succeeds, in her view, "because I'd gotten to know a great deal
about Italian manners and the way Italians differ from Americans in their
perceptions of things."

She made the American characters Southern, she explained in an accent that
still reveals her upbringing, "because that's what I am and I feel more at
home with Southerners." As for the romantic atmosphere that envelops the
story, Spencer had been a Guggenheim Fellow in Italy in the early 1950s
when she met and married her English-born husband.

Her story was published in The New Yorker in 1960, and made into a 1962
movie starring Olivia de Havilland, Yvette Mimieux, Rossano Brazzi and
George Hamilton. "I thought it was a pretty movie; it was shot in Florence
and they stuck to my characters and my story," Spencer said, although she
found it ironic that an English actress was chosen to play the American
mother and an American was cast as the Italian son. (Victoria Clark plays
the mother in the new musical, and Matthew Morrison is the son.)

The novella went on to be published in a dozen languages and included in
literary anthologies and course curricula. In 2001, it was part of a
collection of Spencer's work published as "The Southern Woman" by Modern
Library.

The story "still immediately brings Italy to life for me," says Spencer,
who admits she really doesn't understand why "The Light in the Piazza" with
its "out-of-the-ballpark plot" became her best-known work. She has written
nine novels, including "The Voice at the Back Door" (1956), "and any number
of short stories I find much better or equal to it," she said.

Over the years, Spencer had been approached several times about a stage
version of "The Light in the Piazza," but says its rights were tied up by a
contract she had "unwisely given to an agent I thought was my friend."
Things worked out for the best: composer Adam Guettel, she feels, "has the
story at heart, as well as in mind."

WHEN & WHERE

"The Light in the Piazza." Opens Monday at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at
Lincoln Center. Call Telecharge at 212-239-6200 or go to www.lct.org.
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.

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stage/ny-ffthe4216937apr17,0,4949847.story