Donizetti Education
HIGH SCHOOL.

The cultural heritage constituted by the music of the past and of a great composer such as Gaetano Donizetti must be enhanced by continuing to dialogue with the present. A privileged place for this dialogue can only be the school, a fundamental junction between the past and the future.
For the 2024/2025 school year we have thought of an even more varied and articulated proposal for secondary schools. First and foremost are the three premieres of titles from the Donizetti Opera festival: Don Pasquale, Zoraida di Granata (at the Teatro Sociale) and Roberto Devereux. There is no shortage of interactive workshops such as “Opera wow,” held at schools, and “Qui Lucia,” at the Donizetti Theater. There will also be some not-to-be-missed events:
From Jan. 24 to 26, an exhibition featuring artistic returns by secondary students following the viewing of previews. There will also be no shortage of informal gatherings such as open rehearsals and the now traditional Lucia Off rehearsal, the conference performance by our artistic director Francesco Micheli, which will symbolically inaugurate the school year.

We are also expecting all teachers on October 19 for an intensive training day at the Donizetti Theater. The course is conducted in collaboration with the Bergamo Territorial School Office.

Educational projects for preschools, primary and secondary schools

Opera can be a dual resource being an opportunity both for knowledge in the most didactic sense of the term and for personal education and experience. Its didactic value, which makes it unique and unparalleled, is that of being the result of the interaction between different linguistic and communicative codes (musical, iconic, literary), lending itself, therefore, for interdisciplinary confrontation with school didactics. The educational value, then, lies in its subject matter: the work stages human stories and events and with them the joys, sorrows, achievements and desires of man, told through the words and gestures of the protagonists of the works. From time to time their emotions, their thoughts are narrated and, in this sense, opera is at the service of that emotional education of children, which is promoted in the school environment today. This is the new direction that moves the proposals of Donizetti Educational: emphasizing the figure of Donizetti as a Master of Emotions and enhancing the multidisciplinary nature intrinsic in opera itself.

Donizetti Educational. Digital Experience

Educational project for Primary and Secondary Schools in Bergamo and Province.

Donizetti educational. Digital experience is the new digital initiative dedicated to Gaetano Donizetti and intended for the world of schooling. It will be for the first time free of charge and entirely in digital format, to provide support and a concrete contribution at such difficult stages in the educational journey of the youngest. Donizetti’s theater and music are intended to be a resource for schools. Thus, fundamental tools will be made available for an original and age-appropriate itinerary to discover the new Donizetti Theater , which, as soon as possible, will reopen its doors to welcome the public: such a fundamental moment for the Foundation and the City must be prepared and shared with the youngest. This is a way to introduce students to the city theater, its history, innovations and changes brought about by the restoration.

The course, from April 6, 2021 until the end of the school year, is differentiated according to school cycle and includes a three-part documentary video at the restored Donizetti Theater, combined with a package of educational activities that will provide a true educational experience to learn about Donizetti and the world of theater.

Meetings can be run independently by teachers with full digital support delivered through Gsuite_Classroom platform.

Each meeting includes:
– video documentary of the restored Donizetti Theater;
– video comprehension quiz;
– in-depth material (Video for elementary / .ppt for middle and high school);
– an activity sheet based on listening to songs and sound tracks. Topics:
1) The theater (when it was born, where it is located, how it is made, the parts of which it is composed…)
2)The house of opera (What is opera, the artists, the libretto…)
3) Gaetano and his trustees (Who is Gaetano, Donizetti in Bergamo, the operas…) Donizetti ON
For high school students, through their teachers, a 50% discount coupon for the visit can be activated at the end of the course.

The proposal is for all primary and secondary schools in Bergamo and Province. Each registered contact teacher can register their class group for the digital visit experience by filling out the form below. To access the activity Donizetti Educational. Digital Experience : – iscrizione attraverso il form;
– attivazione di un account didattica;
– accesso a Classroom.

OPERAS AND PERFORMANCES

Farsa giocosa per musica in two acts by Giovanni Simone Mayr
Music by Giovanni Simone Mayr and masters
Selection and adaptation by Francesco Micheli and Giorgio Pesenti on the critical edition edited by Candida Billie Mantica
Directed by Francesco Micheli
THE OPERA.
Scenic action in two acts by Giovanni Simone Mayr staged on September 13, 1811 as the final essay of the Charitable Lessons. As with other essays, Mayr adopts the model of eighteenth-century metamelodrama, in which a singing company is depicted in the act of staging a performance and puts on stage the students of the Charitable Lessons themselves-including the young Gaetano-who play themselves as they grapple with staging the final essay. In Piccolo compositore di musica, Donizetti serves as the protagonist, ironically presented as a young aspiring composer convinced of his own talent. Donizetti is joined by four companions from the Charitable Lessons, as themselves: Antonio Dolci, Giuseppe Manghenoni, Giuseppe Pontiroli, and Antonio Tavecchi. Musically, the work alternates between original sections (such as the Introduction) and pre-existing excerpts from works also by other famous contemporary composers.
The children’s first reflections on the theme of the play: https://youtu.be/ZgkGa4INvMk
DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
90 minutes
show90 minutes
workshop		 September 28, 2024 – 8:00 p.m. Donizetti Theater € 15
including ticket and class preparation meeting		 based on theater availability
THE PROJECT.
Students participate in a 90-minute classroom workshop in preparation for the play to discover the plot and background of the direction.

By and with Francesco Micheli
The world needs Gaetano Donizetti, today more than yesterday. The Bergamasque composer’s operas encompass a variety of elements that make them innovative and revolutionary: the characters are charged with extreme feelings, young, vital and never surrendering; they often come from distant countries and make us discover how from Italy we observe the rest of the world.
A symbol of Donizetti’s creativity and these characteristics is Lucia di Lammermoor: a romantic operatic title par excellence, set amid the mists, castles and cemeteries of a medieval Scotland torn apart by struggles between clans, it tells the tender and sincere love story of two teenagers who have grown up too fast and which turns into tragedy. The very young Lucia, forced into an arranged marriage, has only one way out: the madness that dramatically escapes her from a life of constraints and family ties.
Francesco Micheli enters uncompromisingly along with the students into the emotional experience of a girl. Desire to become independent, need to assert oneself as an individual, courage to fight for one’s dreams are some of the great timeless themes that will be addressed thanks to the language and communicative power of the play.

THE PROJECT
Lucia Off is just a taste… After viewing the performance we ask you to continue by choosing from:
– Viewing one of the previews of the Donizetti opera 2024 or 2025
– Participating in the “Qui Lucia” workshop
– Joining the “Opera Wow” project

DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
90 minutes September 30, 2024 – 10:30 a.m. Donizetti Theater free based on theater availability

Secondary school students will have access to the dress rehearsals of the Donizetti Opera 2024 operas, to which they will come prepared thanks to an introductory opera training carried out in the classroom by our staff.

Roberto Devereux

Lyric Tragedy in three acts by Salvadore Cammarano
Music by Gaetano Donizetti
First performance: Naples, Real Teatro di San Carlo, October 28, 1837
Critical edition by Julia Lockhart © Casa Ricordi, Milan with the collaboration and contribution of the City of Bergamo and the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti
The opera is titled male, but the real protagonist is Elisabetta. It is 1837, at the Real Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, and Gaetano Donizetti gives an exceptional part to one of his most beloved and brilliant performers, soprano Giuseppina Ronzi de Begnis, his “black muse,” a specialist in tormented, violent, delirious female characters. Two years after Lucia di Lammermoor, Salvadore Cammarano again stimulates Donizetti’s genius with a concise, compact and highly effective libretto, in line with what the composer proclaimed in a famous letter: “Voglio amore, che senza questo i soggetti sono freddi, e amor violento.” The work ends with a shocking scene of hallucinatory delirium that gives new dramatic meaning to the primadonna’s customary final rondo. In addition, the excellent Donizettian inspiration is also helped by the British setting, among those “Tudors” who had already impassioned him in three other operas, Elisabetta al Castello di Kenilworth, Anna Bolena and Maria Stuarda, and which is also reiterated in the brilliant symphony that explicitly quotes the English hymn God Save the King. Roberto Devereux is among the most significant titles in the production of the mature Donizetti and one of the most successful rediscoveries of the Donizetti-renaissance of the last century. At the Festival, it is entrusted by Donizetti Opera’s music director Riccardo Frizza and staged by a great Shakespearean director (the “real” Shakespeare was involved in the conspiracy of the Earl of Essex), Stephen Langridge, artistic director of the Glyndebourne Festival. On stage, four international bel canto stars such as John Osborn, Raffaella Lupinacci, Simone Piazzola and, in the incandescent part of Elizabeth, Italian-Australian soprano Jessica Pratt.
THE PROJECT
Students participate in a 90-minute in-class workshop in preparation for the play to discover the plot and behind-the-scenes direction.
Following the viewing of the play, each class, or each student, may produce an artwork of their own free choice (graphic, audio, video, literary…) All artwork will be displayed in the Donizetti Studio from Jan. 24-26, 2025 on World Education Day, which falls on Jan. 25. Open Call: We are looking for a class to create an artwork with reflections from the preview audience. The paper will be displayed in the foyer of the Donizetti Theater at the last performance.
DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
3 hours November 12, 2024 – 5 p.m. Donizetti Theater € 15
including ticket and class preparation meeting		 based on theater availability


Zoraida of Granada

Heroic melodrama by Bartolomeo Merelli and Jacopo Ferretti (revamped version)
Music by Gaetano Donizetti
First performance: Teatro Argentina, Rome, January 7, 1824 (revamped version)
Critical edition edited by Edoardo Cavalli © Fondazione Teatro Donizetti
Project #Donizetti200
The title chosen for the #donizetti200 project, which consists of staging in each edition of the Festival an opera written by Donizetti exactly two centuries earlier, is Zoraida di Granata in the second version, that of 1824. In fact, the opera had premiered two years earlier, on January 28, 1822, at the Teatro Argentina in Rome, and was the first great success of Donizetti’s career, although at the last moment Gaetano had to rewrite for a mezzo-soprano en travesti the part of the male protagonist, Abenamet, initially composed for a tenor, who had been electrocuted by an aneurysm on stage a few days earlier while singing an opera by Pacini. Two years later, impresario Paterni asked Donizetti to revise the score, expanding the part of Abenamet to benefit the great contralto Rosmunda Pisaroni. In this new version, the opera was presented, again at the Argentina, on January 7, 1824, without achieving the same triumph as two years earlier: but more due to the inexhaustible thirst for novelty of the audience of the time than to any real weakness of the opera, among the most interesting of Donizetti’s first creative season.
At the Donizetti Opera, Granata’s Zoraida is presented in a new production directed by Bruno Ravella, in co-production with the prestigious Irish festival in Wexford, where, however, it was performed in the 1822 version. On the podium is Alberto Zanardi, a young baton who has been engaged for years “behind the scenes” at the festival. In the parts of the two lovers, two singers who continue to grow in success and fame, soprano Zuzana Marková (Zoraida) and mezzo-soprano Cecilia Molinari (Abenamet), while tenor Konu Kim (formerly in theAnge de Nisida) will be the treacherous Almuzir. Alongside them in the flank parts are the young talents of the Bottega Donizetti.
THE PROJECT
Students participate in a 90-minute in-class workshop in preparation for the opera to find out the plot and behind-the-scenes direction.
Following the viewing of the play, each class, or each student, can produce a free-choice artwork (graphic, audio, video, literary…) All works will be exhibited in the Donizetti Studio from Jan. 24-26, 2025 on the occasion of World Education Day, which falls on Jan. 25.
DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
3 hours November 13, 2024 – 5 p.m. Social Theater € 15
including ticket and class preparation meeting		 based on theater availability

Don Pasquale

Dramma buffo in three acts by Giovanni Ruffini
Music by Gaetano Donizetti
First performance: Paris, Théâtre-Italien, January 3, 1843
Critical edition edited by Roger Parker and Gabriele Dotto © Casa Ricordi, Milan
with the collaboration and contribution of the City of Bergamo and the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti
In 1843, Gaetano Donizetti was one of Europe’s most celebrated opera singers and divided his time between Italy, Vienna and Paris. It was here, on Jan. 3, that he had Don Pasquale performed at the Théâtre-Italien, a Parisian outpost of Italian opera equipped with an exceptional singing company. Donizetti recycled an old libretto written by Angelo Anelli for Stefano Pavesi, Ser Marcantonio, and had it freshened up by a Mazzinian exile, Giovanni Ruffini, but imposing so many and such changes on him that he was, in practice, co-author. The libretto would later be published anonymously under the initials “M. A.,” which stands for Donizetti’s Parisian factotum, the prestanome Michele Accursi. The opera was an immediate success and is one of not many Donizetti titles to have never left the repertoire, albeit in often heavily tampered with and incorrect editions. At the Donizetti Opera, the new critical edition edited by Roger Parker and Gabriele Dotto will be presented for the first time.
In Don Pasquale, Donizetti reworks the most predictable and banal of comic events, already brought to the stage countless times. All the characters are classic: the buffo gabbato, the viperous primadonna, the sighing tenor, the wily baritone. However, Don Pasquale is not only the last masterpiece of the great Italian buffa tradition, but also the first of the new times. Woven with waltzes and galop – the music of its time – the bourgeois comedy looks ironically to the past but is imbued with romantic lyricism: the moment when Norina slaps Pasquale is almost tragic, and the whole opera thrives on a wonderful balance of laughter and tears. The Festival presents it in a staging by the Opéra de Dijon, signed by the celebrated German director Amélie Niermeyer, directed by Iván López Reynoso and featuring two stars of the international opera scene such as Roberto de Candia and Javier Camarena, joined by the young talents of the Bottega Donizetti.
THE PROJECT
Students participate in a 90-minute in-class workshop in preparation for the opera to find out the plot and behind-the-scenes direction.
Following the viewing of the play, each class, or each student, can produce a free-choice artwork (graphic, audio, video, literary…) All works will be exhibited in the Donizetti Studio from Jan. 24-26, 2025 on the occasion of World Education Day, which falls on Jan. 25.
DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
3 hours November 14, 2024 – 5 p.m. Donizetti Theater € 15
including ticket and class preparation meeting		 based on theater availability

With Francesco Micheli and Alberto Pellai and a vintage and infallible tool: opera
Francesco Micheli, director, forerunner of projects and activities to bring young audiences closer to opera and artistic director of the Donizetti Opera, and Alberto Pellai, physician, psychotherapist, researcher and writer, creator of several nationally recognized primary prevention projects, meet with parents and teachers in order to strengthen the dialogue between adults and children, thanks to their experience and our precious opera heritage.
An unprecedented “duet” they start from Lucia di Lammermoor and arrive at today, showing the depth of the opera and its expressive power still relevant today.
DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
90 minutes + debate October 10, 2023 – 8 p.m. Donizetti Theater
  • free for teachers
  • €10 for parents
 based on the availability of the theater

The big school party of the Donizetti Opera festival and the Donizetti Theater to find out what happens on stage and behind the scenes

THE OPERA.
On May 10, 2024, the Donizetti Theater will open its doors to high school boys and girls who will have the opportunity to attend various workshops dedicated to theater, music, and theatrical craftsmen and professionals; afterwards, they will be able to attend the staging of Giovanni Simone Mayr’s opera The Little Composer by five high schools in the city, with fittings and speeches by Francesco Micheli, artistic director of the Donizetti Opera festival.
DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
90 minutes May 10, 2024 – 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Donizetti Theater free based on theater availability
THE PROJECT
In December 2023 the Donizetti Opera festival presented the world premiere of Il piccolo compositore, an opera written by Giovanni Simone Mayr, Gaetano Donizetti’s teacher, specifically for his students. The score was rediscovered and reconstructed by Candida Mantica, musicologist of the festival’s scientific section in the Angelo Mai Library in Bergamo.
The opera is the end-of-course essay of the “Charitable Lessons” of 1811 and features Donizetti himself on stage with some of his classmates, intent on rehearsing for the final essay. From these pages we get to know a somewhat saccharine and boastful Donizetti who quickly provokes the reaction of his classmates, who harass him with real actions that today we would call bullying. This opera has become an educational tool that has allowed us to work with high school students on the very topic of bullying and peer relations, always at the forefront of schooling. Starting from a canovaccio specially written by Silvia Briozzo (theater director and children’s theater expert), since January 2024 five high schools in the city and province (Liceo Lussana, Liceo Secco Suardo, Istituto Mamoli, Istituto Pesenti, and Ente di formazione professionale Sacra Famiglia) have been working on their own staging of Mayr’s score as a school essay. The Donizetti Theater Foundation in particular with the Donizetti Opera festival, in addition to sharing this opportunity and offering the city’s largest stage, wishes to create a broad educational action with more institutions, offering not only an opportunity for reflection on the issue of bullying, but also on theatrical and vocational training: in fact, all secondary schools will be offered a morning in the theater to be able to attend the performance of their peers and follow workshops of their choice, to make them better acquainted with the world of theater, its professionalism, and the art of acting and singing. Thus, the morning of May 10, 2024 will be a real festive and educational occasion at the Donizetti Theater, which will welcome more than 600 students: 100 will be on stage, i.e., the five classes that will perform a scene from the Little Composer; another 500 will have the opportunity to attend three workshops each of their choice in more than 10 rooms of the Donizetti Theater, including rehearsal rooms, understage, carpentry, lecture halls, dressing rooms, historical rooms… The theater experience is above all to be lived in person, experiencing the thrill of stepping on a big stage where they can bring the fruit of almost a year’s work or having the chance to learn about and experience new disciplines and new professions little known to students: stage manager, director, stagehand, tailor, prop maker, theater photographer, music critic, conductor…

Participation in the morning of activities is free for all students; it is necessary to register and reserve the workshops, as they have different capacities (3 workshops per registered student).

Registration
Form for teachers: https://forms.gle/zX96UKDzWYEAVTQz9
Student form: https: //forms.gle/FfWeEb4v95t8aaFD7 Timetable of the morning
8 a.m. Welcome at the entrance of the Donizetti Theater
8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Workshop 1
9:15 a.m. – 9:45 a.m. Workshop 2
10:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. Workshop 3
11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. The Little Composer, staging of the 5 schools involved

List of workshops

  1. Creative team, how directing an opera comes about
    Director Manuel Renga tells us how the directorial idea of staging an opera comes about, from the moment the artistic director calls to “Who’s on stage.”
    Where: Ridotto Gavazzeni
    Capacity: 100 students
    Speaker: Manuel Renga, opera and drama director
  2. The prop maker, for credible staging
    Who takes care of all the small and large objects on stage? Who has the ability to turn an ordinary glass into a holy grail? Who puts the flowers in Romeo’s hand before he enters the stage? Who procures the skull for Hamlet without getting arrested? The props maker is waiting for you in his realm, the understage, to tell you his secrets.
    Where: Understage-carpentry
    Capacity: 20 students
    Speaker: Paola Rivolta, Donizetti Opera set and props maker
  3. Theatrical Tailoring
    A tour of the relays and sewing machines of every theater’s most fascinating and sought-after workshop.
    Where: Tailoring
    Capacity: 20 students
    Speaker: Cinzia Mascheroni, head seamstress Donizetti Opera
  4. Makeup and hair
    Theatrical make-up and all the professional skills it takes to make up and prepare a character
    Where: Camerino chorus
    Capacity: 20 students
    Speaker: Chiara Cividini, make-up artist Donizetti Opera
  5. Theater at the desk: production office and staging
    A computer, lots of Excel, renderings, a little CAD, calendars and months of work to make the ephemeral of theater real.
    Where: Music Room
    Capacity: 80 students
    Speakers: Sergio De Giorgi, head of stage design office Fondazione Teatro Donizetti, Umberto D’Annolfo, assistant
  6. Acting: preparing the body and voice.
    Inhabiting space, loosening up movements and warming up the voice. The exercises of actors and actresses before going on stage.
    Where: Cuminetti Hall
    Capacity: 30 students
    Speaker: Fabio Comana, actor and director, creator and host of Progetto Young
  7. Instant Choir!
    Music improvisation workshop. The liberating power of singing and improvisation with the use of voice and body – with final foray on the Sentierone.
    Where: Camerino orchestra or entrance galleries
    Capacity: 25 students
    Speaker: Ermanno Novali, pianist, improviser and teacher
  8. ’30, 15, 5, Who’s on stage!… Curtain!‘
    The very delicate task of behind-the-scenes coordination.
    Where: Bar gallery
    Capacity: 20 students
    Speaker: Mauro De Santis Donizetti Opera production director and stage manager
  9. Create your music
    How to compose a pop/trap song thanks to electronics
    Where: Allianz Hall
    Capacity: 30 students
    Speakers: Jodi Pedrali music producer and Michele Clivati songwriter and producer
  10. When it’s no longer funny. Collective atonement workshop
    The written word as a tool for confessing and becoming aware of that time when the joke went too far.
    Where: Missiroli Hall
    Capacity: 20 students
    Speaker: Maria Teresa Galati, actress and theater trainer
  11. Music criticism, an activity to be discovered
    Those who still write about music and theater today have a great social and cultural responsibility. Some of the participants will have the opportunity to attend the performance The Little Composer on May 10 at 11:30 a.m. from the reserved stage and then write a review. The best ones will be published by an official newspaper.
    Where: Riccardi Hall
    Capacity: 60 students
    Speaker: Floriana Tessitore, Donizetti Opera press and communications office, journalist and music critic
  12. Stage Photography
    The history of theatrical photography, through the archives of the Donizetti Theater and the skills of the stage photographer(s). Some volunteer participants will be able to attend the performance The Little Composer on May 10 at 11:30 a.m. from the stage dedicated to photographers to take some shots, which will be published in the local press. Those who wish can bring their cameras.
    Where: Former assessor’s room
    Capacity: 30 students
    Speakers: Clelia Epis iconographic research and archives Fondazione Teatro Donizetti and Gianfranco Rota photographer
  13. Conducting, power in a baton
    80 chorus artists, 50 orchestra professors, 10 opera singers and all backstage, to be led with a gesture. The interdisciplinary skills of conducting, a role of great responsibility.
    Where: Camerino orchestra
    Capacity: 30 students
    Speaker: Alberto Zanardi, conductor and composer

AROUND DONIZETTI OPERA 2024

After the positive experience of the open rehearsals last year, this year we again have the opportunity to attend some of the highlights of the production phase of Don Pasquale and to meet the director and many of the insiders.
We have identified two times to attend the rehearsal work, for a small group of curious young viewers.
Membership in this project includes attendance at both events.
DURATION DATES PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
90 minutes

90 minutes

 Nov. 5 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. directing rehearsal

Nov. 13 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. ensemble rehearsal

 Donizetti Theater free based on availability

For classes that request it, it is possible to organize an additional meeting at school, of a historical-musical nature held by Paolo Fabbri, director of the Foundation’s scientific sector. This is an opportunity to learn more about the works on the bill and deepen our knowledge of Gaetano and his time.
DURATION DATES PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
2 hours by request school free based on availability

LABORATORIES

From opera to electronic music through a journey of self-discovery.

Project dedicated to classes that took part in Lucia Off

Opera Wow is a project dedicated exclusively to adolescents and their emotional complexities, in which they can set creativity in motion as a resource for resilience, transformation and openness. It wants to be an innovative action whose primary purpose is not only to transmit to the teenagers in the city the knowledge of one of the five greatest composers in the world and his works, but also to make use of it as a tool in a complicated period such as adolescence. A path to accompany students and their educators, starting with Opera and moving through electronic music, through the power of melodrama and the universal and profound stories that tell of youth, love, challenges, initiation, victories and defeats.

MEET DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
2 student workshops 2 hours each. October to December 2024 Donizetti Theater and school venues € 300 based on availability
1 meeting for teachers 4 1/2 hours October 19, 2024 – 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Donizetti Theater free based on availability

The Foundation’s iconographic archive opens to educational projects. Of particular quality and breadth is the one on Lucia di Lammermoor…in short, Lucia is special here! The extensive endowment of iconographic material makes it possible to reconstruct the visual world related to such an iconic performance, including iconographic comparisons and other insights. A proposed visit to the theater spaces related to Lucia di Lammeroor and the great protagonists who brought her to the stage is planned, with an interactive workshop. During the workshop, original materials will be shown: a real plus for children and audiences now accustomed only to digital reproduction. Certainly exciting will be the contact with unique pieces to be appreciated in their dimensions, in the specificity of the materials, and in the history that they carry marked by time. After a brief presentation of the opera, during the workshop participants are asked to reconstruct the plot (through sketches and scene photos) of Lucia di Lammermoor and recognize its characters through the use of archival images. Exercises continue with questions about the character’s kinship, ties, family, role, the psychology of the characters.
Also interesting is the exercise on the stagings that over time have brought Lucia di Lammermoor to life ; through them the children will be stimulated to note how over the decades sets, staging, acting have changed.
We continue with exercises on iconography and iconology (with an introduction to the meaning of the terms). Archival photographs of Lucia di Lammermoor are used and shared work is done on the recognition of each character’s attributes and iconological elements.
This is followed by a reworking part through the choice of key words and the production of an original commentary on the large book dedicated to collecting The Voices of Lucia.

DURATION DATES PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
90 minutes by request based on theater availability Donizetti Theater 100 per class based on availability

To celebrate Gaetano Donizetti’s 226th birthday, the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti is organizing many activities again this year that will involve schools in the province of Bergamo, with the aim of bringing boys and girls closer and closer to the artistic and human figure of our great composer from Bergamo.
The following are some proposals:
  • L‘MUSICAL ELEVATION IN THE BASILICA OF SAINT MARY MAJOR
An official celebration that, like every year, dedicates an institutional moment to the man who carried the name of Bergamo around the world, thanks to his eternal and universal music.
The conservatory’s ensemble will play a dedicated program, and the young people who participated in the ‘Our Letter for Gaetano’ project will read their work.
DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
90 minutes November 29, 2024 11:15 a.m. (tentative time) Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore free subject to availability
  • OUR LETTER TO GAETANO
Three secondary school classes will be able to participate in November in a creative writing workshop focused on the theme of travel, starting precisely from Donizetti’s epistolary and those letters that tell of the journeys that marked Gaetano Donizetti’s life.
Travel, then, as a metaphor for the path of growth and the winding road to adulthood.
The letters produced will be read by the children themselves in front of the townspeople during the musical elevation inside the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo.
DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
2 meetings of 1 hour each to be arranged with the school school free reserved for 3 classes
  • VISIT TO THE BIRTHPLACE OF GAETANO DONIZETTI
On Nov. 29, Donizetti’s Birthplace will be open by reservation.
Cost per student is €3 – without guided tour.

TEACHER TRAINING

“Donizetti Education” training day 2024|2025

Project carried out in collaboration with Territorial School Office

For many years, the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti has offered training sessions for teachers of schools of all levels, from kindergarten to high school.
Educational meetings have always been held in extracurricular hours, using in-person and online workshops and lectures, and often making use of particle sessions in singing and music, as well as manual skills for the lower school orders and in collaboration with ATS and psychological operators and educators for adolescents, aiming for multidisciplinarity and fluency of skills. Participation has always been very high, especially among compulsory school teachers who numbered 150 in the current school year. The training sessions have always been designed in preparation for students’ participation in the performances offered by the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti, with the aim of providing teachers with the teaching tools and notions to then be able to personally work in the classroom with their students. In recent years, however, the need has arisen to expand the educational offerings for teachers, creating an opportunity for them as potential users of the Foundation’s artistic proposals, but also as protagonists in the education of young audiences.

For this reason, for the 2024/2025 school year, the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti has decided to offer an intensive day of unified training, aimed at all teachers of all grade levels, with the purpose of providing notions and teaching tools to all teachers who intend to broaden their interest in opera and Gaetano Donizetti. At the same time, the course will provide suggestions for being able to pass on some skills to students.
The course will be a single day, for the total duration of 8 hours in which there will be moments dedicated to all, and specific moments for each school order.
Participation will be totally free, and printed and digital educational materials will be provided.
Attendance at the course does not include compulsory class enrollment in the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti’s performances and educational projects; it is intended to be an opportunity for teachers to study and deepen their knowledge regardless of the actual impact on their classes. This decision stems from the desire to involve teachers first and foremost as privileged interlocutors and bearers of culture to the new generations, in accordance with the guidelines of the Foundation’s statute.
  • PLACE: Music Hall “M. Tremaglia” – Donizetti Theater
  • DATE: October 19, 2024 – 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
  • DURATION: full day
  • COST: free of charge

PLANNING

Opera Wow – works and workshops

To accompany adolescents on the complex and STUFFFUL path of growth, through Opera. A project of the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti, in collaboration with ATS and
Territorial School Office of Bergamo

Special project dedicated exclusively to adolescents, the primary purpose of which is not only to pass on knowledge of opera heritage to adolescents, but also to make use of this heritage and live performance as a tool to accompany adolescents on the complex journey of processing and transforming the latest pandemic events. Adolescents, in particular, have experienced moments of major destabilization in the past year and a half. For this reason, the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti would like to make itself available to high school teachers by proposing, through an operatic journey, a reinterpretation of their own experience in which they can mobilize their creativity as a resource for resilience, transformation and openness. Thanks to the vicissitudes of the protagonists and the emotional power of the live performance, Opera can in fact become a valuable tool and starting point to accompany students and their educators on the path of introspection that awaits them.

  • PLACE: Donizetti Theater, school venues and Laboratory Institute Pesenti
  • DATES: October 2022 to April 2023
  • COST: €300 per class

PROJECT ACTIONS:

Presentation Opera Wow Teachers
Donizetti Theater/ATS
Maino-Galati

I meeting teachers
Donizetti Theater/ATS
Maino-Galati

I student lab
School Locations
Maino – Galati

II teachers’ meeting
Donizetti Theater/ATS
Maino-Galati

III teachers’ meeting
Donizetti Theater/ATS
Maino-Galati

II student workshop
Istituto Pesenti
Pedrali – Avilés
Galati Composition and recording of a piece of electronic music. Free dissemination by students

Artistic reworking by Donizetti
Short live performance with some students, voluntary participation.

  • Debut at school presentation meeting
  • Debut/Replication at Donizetti Night – July 2023
  • Replication in November 2023

I’ll tell you about the Donizetti:
kids and children by the hand as they discover the theater

Thanks to the excellent success of the school-to-work alternation project for the 2021-2022 school year, which involved 20 high school classes and more than 1,000 elementary and middle school students from Bergamo and its province, we are re-proposing the Donizetti Theater Guided Tours activity conducted and managed by students in PCTO and intended for compulsory school children. In addition to references on the history of the theater and Gaetano Donizetti, the experience will allow them to experience firsthand the complex machine of the theater while also discovering the behind-the-scenes of a performance. The project thus involves two simultaneous actions with different goals and objectives: training of adolescents and enjoyment by children, in a peer education perspective. Along the way, students will develop relational, communication and learning skills about the history of the theater and Donizetti.

  • PLACE: Donizetti Theater
  • DATES: Monday through Wednesday from January 9 to March 8, 2023
  • COST: free of charge

Project feasible only if funded by the Cariplo Foundation’s call
“Discovering Culture”

OPERA EDUCATION

Opera Education is AsLiCo ‘s Italian platform that promotes passion for opera in young audiences. The Fondazione Teatro Donizetti hosts annual performances for the musical and opera education of children and young people, fun educational paths between school and theater.

Primary and secondary school

La Cenerentola. Grand Hotel dei sogni

Social Theater
March 6 and 7, 2022

For the 2021/2022 season, Opera Education AsLiCo together with its co-producing partners Théâtre des Champs Elysées and Opéra de Rouen will present Rossini’s opera La Cenerentola. Daniele Menghini, vincitore del concorso per il progetto di regia, porterà in scena una delle fiabe più famose e amate dal pubblico.
Nella versione di Rossini, sorprendentemente, non ci troviamo di fronte ad una vera e propria fiaba, poiché il compositore ed il suo librettista Ferretti depurano la storia da tutti gli elementi magici e fiabeschi: non ci sono topi che si trasformano in cocchieri, nessuna zucca che si trasforma in una carrozza, non c’è la fata madrina e non c’è nemmeno la scarpetta di cristallo. La storia prende vita in un Grand Hotel: un melting pot di culture e classi sociali differenti, una dimensione che fa dello scambio e dell’incontro una ricchezza, un luogo speciale in cui un ospite illustre come un principe può incontrare e innamorarsi proprio di una cameriera, riconoscendo la vera bellezza che si nasconde dietro un grembiule sporco.

Information: www.aslico.org
Cost:
– €5 show viewing
– €12 show viewing + booklet

with the contribution of

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