OperaLombardia, the co-production network promoted by Teatro Grande di Brescia, Teatro Sociale di Como, Teatro Ponchielli di Cremona and Teatro Fraschini di Pavia with the support of the Italian Ministry of Culture, Regione Lombardia and Fondazione Cariplo, announces a selection of a directing project for La bohème by Giacomo Puccini, on the occasion of the centenary of the death of the composer, that will be represented within the 2024/2025 Opera Seasons at OperaLombardia Theatres, and that will involve the participation of the winners of the International Aslico Competition for Young Opera Singers 2024. The selection is in collaboration with Opera Europa and in co-production with Fondazione Teatro Regio di Parma and Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia.
380 years after its first execution, L'incoronazione di Poppea still engages today, thanks to an intriguing plot with hot-tempered and passionate characters. Monteverdi and his librettist Gian Francesco Busenello present, for the first time in musical theatre history, historical and not mythological events. The story fast unravels itself through uncontrolled ambitions, murderers and a sensuality that doesn't know perseverance or remorse, displaying indifference to ethical decree that arouses astonishment also keeping in mind seventeenth-century Venice costumes. The direction is assigned to M° Antonio Greco while the elegance and refinement of the staging is cured by M° Pier Luigi Pizzi.
The opening of the Opera and Ballet Season 2023 will be dedicated to a title very dear to the Teatro Grande in Brescia, Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini. In May 1904 in Brescia, after the unexpected fiasco of the Milanese premiere, the new “Bresciana” version of the opera achieved a huge international success and sanctioned the immortality of Puccini’s masterpiece. The show will be a new staging (international co-production by Teatri di Opera Lombardia, Teatro del Giglio di Lucca, Rahvusooper Estonia National Opera of Tallinn) in which will be proposed the second edition of the opera – the one born in Brescia.
Singspiel with the most brilliant musical system, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte will be on stage in October. The opera lends itself to a thousand readings and will be staged with the participation of the young winners of the competition AsLiCo 2023. The staging will be a co-production of Opera Carolina (USA) and Teatri di OperaLombardia.
Luisa Miller by Giuseppe Verdi, opera among the least performed among the Composer’s works and absent from OperaLombardia since 2001, will be the fourth title of 2023. The staging will be an international co-production with Opéra Grand Avignon, Opéra de Tours, Opera Slaska Bytom and the Teatri of Opera Lombardia.
Absent for 20 years from the stage of OperaLombardia, Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo will return in new a staging that will be a co-production of the Teatri of Opera Lombardia. The new staging is cured by the young and award-winning director Andrea Bernard who will make his debut in OperaLombardia after having signed important stagings in Italy and abroad. The direction is assigned to M° Jacopo Brusa, after the success of Il Trovatore in 2021.
Disguises, dark places and lost doors meander along the score. The narrative device of this work is a labyrinth, strangely more like a screenplay than a theatrical plot.
La Gioconda by Amilcare Ponchielli is a highly scenic impact play, always awaited by opera lovers. The libretto by Arrigo Boito is drawn from the drama Angelo tyran de Padoue by Victor Hugo and draws a dark and mysterious Venice, a scene of passionate and nefarious excess, perfectly mirrored to the melodic and generous composers vein. The conduction is entrusted to Francesco Ommassini, while set and directions bring the refined signature of Filippo Tonon
The great Milanese composer’s last opera, based on De Filippo’s comedy of the same name, saw the light in 1977 in Spoleto, directed by Eduardo himself. Coldly received by critics at first, it has fortunately been reappraised and is now part of the most performed opera repertoire of the second half of the last century, also thanks to this production by Festival della Valle d’Itria, which OperaLombardia Theatres have decided to re-propose. Alongside De Filippo’s famous cinematographic and theatrical work, Nino Rota combines sounds ranging from Neapolitan songs to verismo, from jazz to musicals, with the unmistakable melodic talent that has made Rota one of the most successful composers of music for the big screen.
