This room is dedicated to Bindo Missiroli, director from 1931 to 1962.

He was a unique character: educated as an accountant, he worked for years as an insurance agent but he found the time and energy to study music. He took care of the administration, made artistic choices, kept the contacts with the singers and all the other artists. Hundreds of letters bear witness to his many efforts, as he strived to keep the budget, took daring decisions, made great friends, such as Gianandrea Gavazzeni.

After a few years of static and rather dull activity, he changed everything and brought Theater into the future.
Missiroli, supported by Gavazzeni, brought Bergamo to the forefront of the national music scene. They founded the so called Teatro delle Novità (Novelty Theatre) that aimed to revive the Italian opera tradition by commissioning brand new works. Librettos were written by such great personalities as Buzzati and Calvino, with music by Ghedini, Malipiero, Chailly and many more.

From 1937 to 1973, the Italian government surprisingly chose Bergamo, and Donizetti Theater, to produce the newest, most revolutionary operas.
Those were vibrant years, the audience sometimes liked the productions, sometimes it didn’t. Everything was changing: operas had stage directors for the first time, after years of leaving the task of coordinating the artists to the conductor, or to the artists themselves. To design the sets, young designers, painters and architects were employed.
Missiroli designed many opera seasons combining innovative works with operas from the traditional repertoire, hiring top-notch artists and conductors. He was the one who started the so-called Donizetti Renaissance, an international cultural movement aiming to revive lost or unknown works by maestro Donizetti.