Maria Perego died, she created Topo Gigio

Carlo Conti with Topo Gigio during the show dedicated to the Zecchino d'Oro two years ago

Born in Venice in 1923, grandson of a puppeteer after the Academy of Dramatic Art, she invented several characters including Picchio Cannocchiale, but the real success came in the early 1960s with the creation, together with her husband Federico Caldura, of Gigio inspired by Mickey Mouse, an important relationship he told in the book Me and Topo Gigio. After joining RAI in 1954, almost immediately in children's TV, after a series of papier-mache experiments, she realized that it was better to use puppets with mechanisms with animators dressed completely in black that disappeared on TV. "Many say that the Mouse was created in '59 but since the mechanism was not perfect, I say that it was born in '61," he said. In 1961 he was the first animated puppet to appear in the Carosello, as a testimonial for Pavesini biscuits. The same year he is the protagonist of the film The adventures of Topo Gigio directed by Federico Caldura and Luca De Rico with screenplay by Guido Stagnaro and Mario Faustinelli and 1961 is also the year of the debut on the Corriere dei Piccoli. Maria Perego in her long career has made extraordinary encounters: Ed Sullivan, Louis Armstrong, Ichikawa, Hugo Pratt, Michael Jackson, Lucio Dalla, John Wayne and many others, all traveling companions and sincere admirers of a simple character like Topo Gigio Deep and very addictive, thanks to him Maria Perego has traveled the world and done shows on TV in the entire globe from the United States to Japan. In 1974 Topo Gigio had led Canzonissima together with Cochi and Renato and Raffaella Carra.

His last appearance a few weeks ago a The girls, transmission of Raitre, where he said of his creature: "Topo Gigio is a naive character, but with his optimism he tries to justify himself, to invent, to introduce himself and lead to fantasy and absurdity. He is always poised between fantasy and reality" . Rai will continue its work and pay homage to it in 2020 with a series dedicated to Topo Gigio, on the anniversary of his first television appearance

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