When Moira Orfei was born in 1931, her family had been bringing their circus acts to Italy for generations. When he died, ten years ago, he had become the celebrity his extended family had never been, a face imprinted on popular culture and the thousands of posters that for decades plastered the country’s streets heralding the presence of his circus in the city, Italy’s most famous and celebrated.
Since her departure, Orfei’s circus has ceased to exist, closed during the pandemic due to a crisis of image and popularity that actually began long before, while Moira Orfei’s fame consolidated in cinema and television. The exploitation and abuse of animals is now acceptable to a small number of people, and at least in its traditional form, it is a type of spectacle that is increasingly unattractive. In suburban squares and provincial towns there are still striped tents, which are less and less frequented. Some people continue to abuse the Orfei surname, a practice that began in the 1980s and that the main branch of the family tried unsuccessfully to oppose.
Moira Orfei Circus in Rome (©Franceschi/Gisone/Lapresse)
Born in the province of Udine to a nomadic family of Sinti origin, Moira Orfei became a celebrity in her circus performances as a horsewoman, trapeze artist, acrobat, elephant tamer and pigeon trainer. Her style is immediately recognizable: intense makeup, thick eyeliner, very thin eyebrows, the famous mole above the lip and a turban hairstyle. The choice of her stage name was also part of the character construction: initially she wanted to call herself “Mora”, because of her dark hair and eyes, then she added an “i” to make it “more exotic”. Some define his style as “Fellinian”, adopted at the suggestion of producer Dino De Laurentiis. He appeared in dozens of films and became a TV personality, a regular guest Entry Week in the 2000s. It was in those years that because of his style and manner he also became a symbol of the Italian LGBTQ+ community.
But as Moira Orfei’s popularity increased, the circus’ popularity declined. Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, television, cinema, and later video games and digital entertainment offered new forms of low-cost entertainment, reducing the appeal of traveling circuses. And in the same period, the general public’s sensitivity to animal rights increased, and circuses that did not exploit them, such as Cirque du Soleil. This trend consolidated over the years, then came the death of Moira Orfei and the pandemic, and in 2020 Italy’s most famous circus closed.
Today’s circus attendance is far from the decades when circuses were a popular and profitable activity. In 2024, there will be 16,019 circus performances held, but the number of spectators will decrease by 5.4 percent compared to the previous year. The average income per performance was 580 euros, compared to an average of 3,782 euros for the entire sector which includes ballet, prose and opera among many disciplines.
In recent years, several animal rights associations, including the Anti-Animal Dissection League (LAV), have opposed public funding for circuses that use animals. This is a recurring criticism, but the reason why state funding for circus activities still exists is for historical reasons: public support was introduced in 1968, when circuses were one of the most widespread forms of entertainment in Italy. They are traveling performances that are widely present at festivals and village squares, and are therefore considered a cultural reality that must be protected.
With law No. 337 of 18 March 1968, the State assigned “social value” to circuses and traveling shows, committing to support their “consolidation and development” also with economic and fiscal benefits. In subsequent years, the Single Entertainment Fund (FUS) was added to this framework, which remains one of the main financing instruments in the sector today. In 2022 the Ministry of Culture made 137 contributions totaling around 8 million euros. In 2023 the allocation is just over 8 million, and in 2024 funding continuity is ensured. This money does not cover the entire cost of the circus’ activities, but it continues to be criticized by animal rights associations because some of the money is also channeled to circuses that use animals.
According to a Doxa survey conducted by LAV in 2023, 76 percent of the public in Italy oppose the use of animals in circuses, 80 percent are willing to attend shows without animals and 79 percent agree with “reconverting circuses featuring animals into shows with jugglers, trapeze artists and other acts, without the use of animals”. To try to intervene in this system, in 2022 parliament approved a law allowing the elimination of the use of animals, but the legislative decision that would have made this system operational has been postponed several times: the deadline is now set at 31 December 2026.
