Italian theatregoers were denounced in France as uncultured thugs after booing Catherine Deneuve, the iconic Gallic actress, at a festival in Tuscany.

In the latest hitch in an already troubled Franco-Italian relationship, the star provoked uproar when she read her text in French during a 45-minute performance in Lucca.

The audience, which had paid as much as €55 (£47) to see a work touted as the centrepiece of La Versiliana Festival, had been expecting an Italian-language play lasting 80 minutes.

Corriere Della Sera, the Italian daily, said that perplexity, disappointment, disgust and anger had greeted Deneuve as she read a text based on Je Me Souviens (I Remember), a book written by Georges Perec, the French author, in 1978.

The work, a collection of postwar memories, was incorporated into a stage performance featuring black-and-white film and described by Renato Giordano, the director, as a homage to Deneuve.

Spectators whistled, shouted “thieves” at the organisers and called for their ticket money to be reimbursed. Many said that they understood only the lines read in Italian by Michele Placido, Deneuve’s partner on stage.

The revolt ended when Massimiliano Simoni, the chairman of the festival, summoned a unit of carabiniere — Italy’s military police — to the theatre and promised spectators free tickets to another play. “It got really ugly, to say the least,” he said.

In France, however, the treatment of the actress, 65, seen as the embodiment of Gallic femininity, was taken as a slight on the national honour.

“Shame on those who booed,” said one chat-forum user on the internet. “Let them go back to their lasagne.”

“Did this bunch of illiterate shouters escape from a football stadium?” said another. “If it had been Audrey Hepburn reading a text in English no one would have minded.”

Supporters of Deneuve said that the Italian audience had shown a lack of respect for her status and also for the French tongue.

But Italians hit back against the woman dubbed “Mother Deneuve”. “When you want to defend French culture abroad, you must make it accessible. Catherine Deneuve made a big mistake in reciting the extract in French — perhaps it was arrogance,” said one.

“She’s an ex-actress anyway,” said a second. “And she’s haughty and pretentious.”

The row is unlikely to smooth cultural understanding between Paris and Rome, which remains difficult despite President Sarkozy’s marriage to Carla Bruni, who was born in Italy.

After Zinedine Zidane head-butted Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final, Raymond Domenech, the French football manager, claimed that the Italians were cheats. This sparked widespread booing of La Marseillaise at a match between the two countries in 2007.

Tension has also marked political relations over France’s reluctance to extradite Cesare Battisti, a writer sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment in Italy for his role in murders orchestrated by far-Left revolutionaries in the 1970s.

Rome fought for almost a decade to persuade Paris to allow his extradition but when authorisation was given in 2002, he fled to Brazil.

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