«The first time I met Ellen and Alice Kessler in person was at the Rai studio via Teulada in Rome. I was filming a scripted novel about the French Revolution, The Great Chameleons, and, as often happens, I went to a restaurant for a canteen break, dressed in stage costume, and there I met two beautiful German women singing Dadaumpa! Ellen and Alice were also wearing stage clothes and someone introduced them to me” says Umberto Orsini in a scene from the autobiographical show Prima del Tempo, directed by Massimo Popolizio (starting tonight at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence).
MEMORY
“This is how we met, I was wearing revolutionary Tallien clothes, and they were wearing sequins and ostrich feathers. But a prisoner was Carousel. It happened in Milan, where Ellen had to shoot an advertisement for Omsa socks with a Don Lurio dance dominated by their famous feet.” The love story between Umberto Orsini and Ellen Kessler lasted more than fifteen years. «To this day I still meet people who remind me: “You are engaged to the Kessler family!” they said to me. “Yes, with one,” I answered.”
BOND
But when you’re engaged to Kessler, you definitely know that the other twin will be interested in your existence. The men Alice met were also aware of this and, although he was the more restless of the two (“My sister spent twenty years with just one man, I had twenty in just one year”), she also had long-term relationships, which began in the 1960s: the first with the French singer Marcel Amont (1929-2023), the second with the actor Enrico Maria Salerno (1926-1994), who was already married. Much courted by the stars (a night of love between Ellen and Burt Lancaster was particularly famous), they had made a firm pact: men at that time had to rely on the total approval of the other party.
PROMISE
And when one is happy, the other is happy too. They will never feel the unhappiness that loneliness brings. Because they had promised: they would always be together, in this life and also in the afterlife. Like the twins Castor and Pollux. Ellen and Alice Kessler’s earthly story reminds us of the Dioscuri in Greek mythology: when Castor died, Pollux, also immortal, chose to follow his brother into the afterlife.
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