Having announced the Prose Season and Other Paths in recent weeks, the Donizetti Theater Foundation completes the presentation of the 2024-2025 Theater Season with the sections of Opera&Concerts, Operetta Season and the End-of-Year Musical, complementing a rich and multifaceted programming that covers a time span that collectively runs from December 2024 to May 2025. The seven titles of Prose, all scheduled for eight performances, and the same number of Other Paths, are thus joined by another nine events divided between Teatro Donizetti and Teatro Sociale: “A vast and articulated offer that allows us to explore different modes of expression and thus reach diversified audience segments, further consolidating the link between the City and its two main theaters,” comments Massimo Boffelli, General Manager of the Donizetti Theater Foundation. “Operetta at the Donizetti is now a widely proven season that gathers around it a loyal audience, and the section dedicated to concerts and opera is also consolidated year by year, thanks to important collaborations: now we greet, among the partners of our Foundation, the Polli Stoppani Foundation, thanks to which we can include in the program a musical event of absolute regard that goes along with the concerts organized together with the Italian Philharmonic Orchestra, the pre-Christmas event with I Piccoli Musici and one of the new productions of OperaLombardia. Finally, after last year’s success, we will reintroduce a musical on the evening of Dec. 31. All this contributes to placing the Donizetti Theater and the Teatro Sociale in a central and indispensable position in the City’s cultural life,” Boffelli concludes.
Opera&Concerts
Opera&Concerti is the section of La Stagione dei Teatri dedicated to music with projects and repertoires that cross different genres, uniting them with each other, and fostering collaboration with important institutional and associative realities in the Lombardy region. It begins with theEnsemble of the Italian Philharmonic Orchestra, which on Thursday, December 5, 2024, offers a new project entitled The Five Elements: Earth Air Water Fire Ether, with the whimsical violin of Alessandro Quarta acting as a guide among the five elements, transforming them and making them his own, bringing the quintessence of nature in concert. The new partnership with the Polli Stoppani Foundation will be in the sign of a prestigious pair of pianists, Michele Campanella and Monica Leone, who will perform the Ninth Symphony by Beethoven in Franz Liszt’s brilliant transcription for two pianos (Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024). And in keeping with established tradition, the end-of-year and beginning-of-year festivities will be marked by the Christmas Concert and the New Year’s Concert, respectively. The former will feature, on Saturday, December 21 at 3:30 p.m., the I Piccoli Musici choir directed by Mario Mora, with a program, different from previous years, entitled The Sound of the Voice: a selection of Folk Songs from different nations, excerpts from musicals by Leonard Bernstein and Richard Rodgers, Opera Songs remembering the centenary of Giacomo Puccini’s death, as well as some of the most beautiful Christmas melodies. The New Year’s greeting, with the fullItalian Philharmonic Orchestra, will take place on Wednesday, January 1, 2025 at 11 a.m. on the notes of famous composers such as Johann Strauss, Antonín Dvořák, Ottorino Respighi and Johannes Brahms.
All concerts are scheduled at the Social Theater. Tickets available from October 15.
For Opera, Teatro Donizetti will host one of Verdi’s masterpieces on Friday, Jan. 10 (8 p.m.) and Sunday, Jan. 12 (3:30 p.m.), Rigoletto, in the new production co-produced by OperaLombardia Theaters, conducted by Alessandro D’Agostini and directed by Matteo Marziano Graziano. Sets by Daniela Zorrozua. Costumes by Laurent Pellisier. Choirmaster Massimo Fiocchi Malaspina. With Chorus of OperaLombardia and Orchestra I Pomeriggi Musicali.
Tickets available from June 4.
A Christmas Carol Musical
New Year’s Eve at the Donizetti Theater (10 p.m.) will be in the sign of a musical based on Charles Dickens’ most famous novel, adapted for musical theater by Melina Pellicano with music by Stefano Lori and Marco Caselle: A Christmas Carol. On stage, in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge, Fabrizio Rizzolo and an artistic cast of more than 20 elements, with special effects curated by Alessandro Marrazzo, original music, 150 costumes and spectacular sets.
Melina Pellicano, director and author of the libretto in the adaptation to the musical, wanted to be as faithful as possible to the novel, because Dickens’ writing shows itself to be very theatrical.
Tickets available from October 15.
Season of Operettas
Also in 2025, the Donizetti Theater is hosting the now unfailing Operetta Season on Sunday afternoons (3:30 p.m.), with, to lead the way, the Jan. 5 Ball at the Savoy, an operetta but also something more. In addition to waltzes, arias and love duets, Ballo al Savoy is in fact full of wild rhythms, from Argentine tango to swing, with very clear allusions and references to the musical. In particular, it resoundingly features Cole Porter, whose music composer Paul Abraham inserts a paraphrase of “Night and Day.” Staged by the Compagnia Teatro Musica Novecento.
Austria is one of the cradles of Operetta: Viennese Dream, the second title on the bill, brought to the stage on Jan. 19 by Compagnia Corrado Abbati, is a show that in drawing on the school of the Austrian capital, but not only, moves between historical reconstruction and pure entertainment through a sequence of sumptuous, fast-paced pictures that act as a common thread in the revival of famous titles and the discovery of others that are less represented. Puccini also wrote for Vienna, and perhaps not everyone knows this.
Finally, on March 30, Scugnizza, an operetta full of typically Neapolitan lyricism. Its story, at times touching and at times comic, is absolutely truthful and reflects the canons of the “Italian-style” operetta, with those traits of regionality that distinguish our operetta production. Staged by the Compagnia d’Operette Elena D’Angelo.
Season tickets on sale from October 22. Tickets available from November 5.
