On This Day

Florian Pittiș

Romanian actor, singer, and director

Anúncio

Florian Pittiș (Romanian: [floriˈan ˈpitiʃ]; 4 October 1943– 5 August 2007) was a Romanian stage and television actor, theatre director, folk music singer, and radio producer.

Born in Bucharest, Florian Pittis attended the Gheorghe Lazăr High School in his native city. He then studied at Politehnica University and graduated in 1966 from the Institute of Theatre and Film, class of Radu Beligan. As a young actor he was hired at one of the best theatres in Bucharest, the Bulandra Theatre, where he worked with directors such as Andrei Șerban, Liviu Ciulei, and Alexandru Tocilescu. In the early 1970s, he studied in Paris with the well-known mime artist, Marcel Marceau.

In 1992, Pittiș was one of the founding members of the band Pasărea Colibri. In 1998, he became the director of Radio Romania Tineret, known as Radio3Net since 2004, the only Romanian radio station that broadcasts exclusively on the Internet.

A great admirer of Bob Dylan, he had translated and adapted some of Dylan's songs: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, Death is Not the End, Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, Mr. Tambourine Man, Rainy Day Women#12 & 35, She Belongs to Me, Silvio.

Emblematic for his long hair, informal wear, and habit of smoking "Carpați", a brand of filterless cigarettes. Pittis was appreciated for his very particular voice, as a singer, on stage, and as a voice-over in television programs. He was called "the prophet of the blue-jeans generation".

In the Benelux and Norway he is remembered for his role as the Parrot in the 1976 Romanian-Soviet-French co-production children musical movie Ma-ma, The English title of the movie was called Rock'n Roll Wolf, it aired on Dutch television in 1980, and it is known as Med Grimm og Gru in Norway, where the film first aired in 1983. For being popular in his own country he received an offer from Walt Disney Pictures in 1993, and provides the voice of Winnie-the-Pooh for the Romanian version of the series, The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, being among the first actors in the country to dub a Disney series in Romanian.

On 30 July 2007, Pittiș was admitted in serious condition at the Fundeni Oncology Institute in Bucharest, where he died a week later on 5 August. He was buried by the Actor's Alley in the city's Bellu Cemetery.

Lucius – Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, director Andrei Șerban, 1968

Fleance – Macbeth by William Shakespeare, director Liviu Ciulei, 1968

Aurel – The End of the World by Victor Eftimiu, director Zoe Anghel Stanca, 1968

Camille – A Flea in Her Ear by Georges Feydeau, director Emil Mandric, 1969

Collin Talbo – The Grass Harp by Truman Capote, director Crin Teodorescu, 1970

Jeremy – Love for Love by William Congreve, director Emil Mandric, 1970

Arlechino – The Liar by Carlo Goldoni, director Sanda Manu, 1971

Valentin – Valentin and Valentina by Aleksei Arbuzov, director Adrian Georgescu, 1972

Feste – Twelfth Night, Or What You Will by William Shakespeare; director Liviu Ciulei, 1973

Count d'Aubigny – Elizabeth I by Paul Foster, director Liviu Ciulei, 1974

Alioska – The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky, director Liviu Ciulei, 1975

Anúncio

Coming soon to the World in Stories app

Audio, offline download, no ads and more.

Learn about Premium
Florian Pittiș | World in Stories