DONIZETTI OPERA 2024: TENTH EDITION OF THE FESTIVAL DEDICATED TO THE COMPOSER FROM BERGAMO
Celebratory programme with two masterpieces: Roberto Devereux and Don Pasquale
Zoraida di Granata is the rare word staged for #donizetti200
LU OpeRave returns in a new venue
The programme includes renowned stars such as Javier Camarena, Roberto de Candia, John Osborn and Jessica Pratt, alongside other established younger performers and students of Bottega Donizetti
On the podium, in addition to musical director Riccardo Frizza, we will see two emerging conductors such as Iván López Reynoso and Alberto Zanardi
The operas will be directed by Stephen Langridge, Amélie Niermeyer, Bruno Ravella and Mattia Agatiello
Bergamo, from 14 November to 1 December 2024 Donizetti Opera
3 May Donizetti Revolution vol. 10
2015-2024: the Donizetti Opera festival – the international festival dedicated to the composer from Bergamo, organized by the Donizetti Theatre Foundation chaired by Giorgio Berta with the general direction of Massimo Boffelli, the artistic direction of Francesco Micheli and the musical direction of Riccardo Frizza – has come to its tenth edition, which will take place in Bergamo, “The City of Gaetano Donizetti”, from 14 November to 1 December 2024.
The Donizetti Opera festival is made possible by the support of Allianz (Main Partner and Honorary Member of the Donizetti Theatre Foundation in Bergamo), Intesa Sanpaolo and a growing number of companies adhering to the Donizetti Ambassadors project that support the festival through Art Bonus.
As we wait for the autumn, another appointment not to be missed for all fans: on Friday, 3 May (8.00 pm), at the Donizetti Theatre, Francesco Micheli, together with some guests, will present the festival programme with the conference-show Donizetti Revolution vol. 10 created in collaboration with Dramaturg Alberto Mattioli; the presenting partner of the event will be Automha.
There will also be other initiatives to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the festival that will be announced in over the next few months.
«This is the tenth edition of Donizetti Opera,» emphasises artistic director Francesco Micheli, «the tenth year we have worked on the construction of a monument to this artist whose greatness is still to be explored, a monument the first piece of which we are proud, and grateful, to have been able to build. On the one hand, we have sought to trace the origins of the man and the artist, presenting his works – both the best- and lesser-known ones – in philologically unexceptionable editions that are consistent with the execution practice of the time. On the other hand, we wanted to combine Donizetti’s revolutionary theatricality with the present time, since we believe that no theatre is as contemporary, vital and necessary as Donizetti’s. we always have the same purpose, today as ten years ago: to popularise Donizetti’s operas, and to spread the beneficial contagion of our love for him in Bergamo, in Italy and throughout the world».
The 2024 edition of the Donizetti Opera festival will, therefore, be special and celebratory, with its weekends “starting” on Thursdays. LU OpeRave will be staged again (Thursday 14, Thursday 21 and Friday 29 November), the new 2023 creation inspired by the most famous of Donizetti’s operas; for this revival “with variations”, LU OpeRave will be staged in a different venue from that of 2023, not specifically a theatrical one, but always open to conviviality and aiming at our present time and innovation. Two famous masterpieces by Gaetano Donizetti will be staged at the Teatro Donizetti: Roberto Devereux (Friday 15, Saturday 23 and Thursday 28 November) and Don Pasquale (Sunday 17, Friday 22 and Saturday 30 November). The Teatro Sociale will host the modern premiere of the “Rome 1824” version of Zoraida di Granata (Saturday 16 November, Sunday 24 November, Sunday 1 December) for the #donizetti200 cycle.
The study and research of Donizetti’s legacy and stylistic uniqueness, entrusted to the scientific department of the Donizetti Theatre Foundation directed by Paolo Fabbri, always plays a pivotal role, as they design the festival programme, choose the editions and prepare the philological restitution of the musical texts.
The collaboration with the Accademia Teatro alla Scala continues in 2024 thanks to the presence of its Choir conducted by Salvo Sgrò. As usual, in the pit there will be the Donizetti Orchestra and the Orchestra Gli Originali, with which we will continue to explore Donizetti’s pages on period instruments.
There will also be a number of concerts, the Dies Natalis programme, training and dissemination activities for students, and initiatives for the city in an intense calendar that will be announced over the next months.
The revival of LU OpeRave
The inaugural week of the 2024Donizetti Opera festival – which won the “Oper! Award” as the best European festival for German critics in 2019 and received four nominations for the International Opera Award as best festival of the year – opens with the revival of one of the most innovative and acclaimed projects over the ten editions of the festival: LU OpeRave (Thursday 14, Thursday 21 and Friday 29 November) in which Donizetti’s music meets electronics and new trends; the reference to Lucia di Lammermoor, from which the authors of this experimental project were inspired, clearly appear in the title. After its debut in 2023 at the Balzer Globe, the new 2024 staging of this work will take place at a new, unconventional venue to be announced in the coming months. LU OpeRave is born out of are Mixopera vol. 1 and vol. 2, two electronic music EPs inspired by Donizetti’s music and produced by some of the most important European electronic musicians gathered around the Fluidostudio label, available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, YouTube Music). Among the EP artists involved in LU OpeRave are Stefano Libertini Protopapa (creative director of the project), ilromantico, H.E.R., all of whom authored of the music. The libretto is by Maniaci d’amore. The work is directed by Mattia Agatiello, who also created the choreographies and brings to the stage his multi-award-winning and famous dance company Fattoria Vittadini based in Milan at the Fabbrica del Vapore. The sets and costumes are by Andrea Cammarosano and Leonardo Persico. The performers come from different musical backgrounds and experiences – soprano Laura Ulloa (a former Bottega Donizetti student in 2021), renowned vocalist David Blank and performer M¥SS KETA as narrator. They embody a kind of fusion that is designed to speak to audiences of all generations, confirming the innovative and revolutionary force of Donizetti’s poetics.
Two great masterpieces at the Donizetti Theatre
Roberto Devereux (1837), on a libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, and Don Pasquale (1843), on a libretto by Giovanni Ruffini, are two of Donizetti’s best-known and best-loved works, staged at the festival for the first time this year. For both, the National Edition produced by Casa Ricordi in collaboration with and with the contribution of the Municipality of Bergamo and the Donizetti Theatre Foundation will be used. For Roberto Devereux it will be the one edited by Julia Lockhart and published in 2022, while for Don Pasquale it will be a true first edition, edited by Roger Parker and Gabriele Dotto, whose official release is planned for 2026.
Donizetti is a true Romantic artist, who ushered in the 19th century by challenging dramaturgical and musical classical canons and by creating a kind of art that was revolutionary for his time but also essential to ours. Time is not the best judge, neither in art nor in life. This is demonstrated, among other things, by the theme that unites two of the three Donizetti Opera titles, Roberto Devereux and Don Pasquale: the burning theme of the possibility to love, and therefore to desire, even in old age or even late, with no gender distinction. A subject with which Donizetti’s theatre proves again to be able to speak to our contemporary age.
«Roberto Devereux is my favourite Donizetti opera», the festival’s musical director Riccardo Frizza has declared on several occasions. After performing it around the world, he will conduct it with the Donizetti Opera Orchestra in Bergamo for the 2024 festival (Donizetti Theatre, Friday 15, Saturday 23 and Thursday 28 November). The opera will be directed by Stephen Langridge from England, formerly head of the Gothenburg Opera, is currently artistic director of the Glyndebourne festival as well as a regular guest on important stages such as the Royal Opera House in London, the Lyric Opera in Chicago, and the Salzburg Festival. The vocal protagonists of this work, «the last stage in the noir saga that Donizetti dedicated to the Tudor dynasty over the years» (P. Fabbri), are such renowned opera performers as Jessica Pratt (Elisabetta), John Osborn (Roberto Devereux), Simone Piazzola (Nottingham), Raffaella Lupinacci (Sara), David Astorga (Cecil) and the students of Bottega Donizetti 2023. Sets and costumes are by Katie Davenport; this opera is co-produced with the Teatro Sociale of Rovigo. Donizetti worked on the composition of the opera during the summer of 1837, a period overshadowed by negative events such as the death of his third son and especially his beloved wife Virginia Vasselli. Devereux is a turning point opera. Compared to the previous “English” titles, and taking advantage of the experience Donizetti had gained, he investigated the figure of Elisabeth in greater depth, and derived from it a tragic and multifaceted character, to which corresponds a vocality that is at once impervious, virtuosic and sorrowful.
The dramma buffo Don Pasquale (Donizetti Theatre, Sunday 17, Friday 22 and Saturday 30 November) has certainly been among the best known and best loved titles of the composer from Bergamo since its triumphant debut in Paris in 1843: it will be vocally entrusted to two “masters” such as Roberto de Candia (Don Pasquale) and Javier Camarena (Ernesto), flanked by the voices of the Bottega Donizetti students, which confirms once again that the Bergamo festival aims to be a springboard for new voices. The production – directed by Amélie Niemeyer with sets and costumes by Maria-Alice Bahra – comes from the Opéra de Dijon. On the podium of the Donizetti Opera Orchestra is the young Mexican conductor Iván López Reynoso who, after making a name for himself at the Rossini Opera Festival, is currently music director of the Orchestra of the Teatro Bellas Artes in Mexico City. «Like Elisir, like Lucia, Don Pasquale», emphasises scientific director Paolo Fabbri, «has never stopped being performed since it was born. An evergreen masterpiece from Donizetti’s last creative season. At the time, there were not so many of them in the comic genre. On the contrary, it was precisely the genre of comic opera that was in crisis. […] Don Pasquale goes further, towards a chamber comedy whose protagonist at times verges on caricature, but almost always remains beyond it. People had laughed for centuries of the amorous tirades of an old man for a young girl: Ruffini and Donizetti preferred to smile wistfully, also because the composer – as we know from his biography – was smiling at himself». With his music, Donizetti breaks through the boundaries of comic conventions, so much so that the modernity of his score should have been reflected in the staging that the composer wanted to be very modern as well.
The #donizetti200 cycle at the Teatro Sociale
In 2024, the title that turns two centuries old and is performed as part of the #donizetti200 cycle is Zoraida di Granata (Teatro Sociale 16 and 24 November, 1 December) on a libretto by Bartolomeo Merelli and – for the version that debuted at the Teatro Argentina in Rome on 7 January 1824 – Jacopo Ferretti. This is a co-production with the Wexford Festival Opera, which a few months ago presented the same title but in the 1822 version; in both cases the critical edition was edited by Edoardo Cavalli for the Donizetti Theatre Foundation. The director of the production is Bruno Ravella, born in Casablanca with Italian and Polish origins, who studied in France and is now based in London; sets and costumes are by Gary McCann. The cast includes Konu Kim (Almuzir, the only performer in common with the Irish festival), Zuzana Marková (Zoraida), Cecilia Molinari, (Abenamet) and for this opera too, some characters will be entrusted to the Bottega Donizetti students. On the podium, Alberto Zanardi, a young conductor who has grown up in recent years “behind the scenes” of the festival and conducted Il piccolo compositore di musica in 2023, will conduct the orchestra of period instruments Gli Originali.
Agreement with LIM – Libreria Musicale Italiana
Just a few days ago a publishing agreement was signed with LIM – Libreria Musicale Italiana, one of the Italian leading specialised publishing houses. The agreemen focuses on enhancing the research initiatives of the festival’s scientific section: from essays on Donizetti (including the volumes of Donizetti’s letters) to monographic volumes and music editions. In addition, the Foundation’s historical publishing catalogue will be distributed worldwide by LIM and the products will be available on the main online sales platforms.
Bottega Donizetti
The call for applications and admissions to “Bottega Donizetti”, the advanced masterclass for young opera singers entrusted also for 2024 to Giulio Zappa (vocal coach and artistic secretary of the Donizetti Opera festival), is available online at donizetti.org. The fourth edition will be held in Bergamo from 20 May to 2 June and then during the production period of the Donizetti Opera 2024, between October and December, during which the students will be engaged in the three productions. Participation in the “Bottega Donizetti” is free of charge and is open to all singers born after 1 January 1992. Applications must be submitted by 1 p.m. on Wednesday 6 March 2024; all details can be found at gaetanodonizetti.org
Bottega Donizetti aims to provide participants with multiple technical, stylistic, critical-interpretive tools to acquire in-depth knowledge of Donizetti and opera singing. This training activity is also possible thanks to the support of the Rotary Club Bergamo Terra di San Marco, which over the years has promoted several fund-raising initiatives for this cause, most recently a special edition of the “Turta del Dunizèt” (“Donizetti’s Cake”), a sweet souvenir of the festival in a special celebratory package.
«Donizetti was an art revolutionary, the inventor of Italian musical Romanticism,» emphasises Alberto Mattioli, «always ahead of his time, a brilliant creator of stories we still believe in because they are emotional dynamite that explodes in our hearts and brains. Revolutionizing what was born as revolutionary, putting him in touch with the present age, explaining that his stories are not old but eternal, is the task of the festival. Donizetti is not a reassuring icon of the past but a stimulus for the present, a man of our time who has been explaining to us for two centuries how we are, and why. But also that to discover all of this together with him is a spectacle, a celebration and a joy. Revolutionary».
Supporters, partners, sponsors, and patrons
The support of the Ministry of Culture, Fondazione Cariplo, Regione Lombardia, Camera di Commercio of Bergamo has been crucial also in 2024. And of our main partner Allianz (Honorary Member of the Donizetti Theatre Foundation) and of Intesa Sanpaolo. In collaboration with Politecnico delle Arti “G. Donizetti – G. Carrara”, Fondazione Mia, Rotary Clun Terra di San Marco, Opera Europa, Fedora.
Special thanks to the Donizetti Ambassadors and all those who support the activities of the Donizetti Theatre Foundation through the Art Bonus.
Biglietteria
Piazza Cavour, 15 – Bergamo – T. 035 4160601/602/603 – Tuesday-Saturday, 1-8 p.m.
biglietteria@fondazioneteatrodonizetti.org
gruppi@fondazioneteatrodonizetti.or
Subscription renewal (Turn A and C): from 28 February to 30 March 2024 at the Ticket Office
New subscriptions (Turn A and C): from 10 April 2024 at the Ticket Office or via e-mail
Reservations (set of tickets and single tickets) already available on gaentanodinizetti.org
Tickets purchase: from 4 May 2024 at the Ticket Office or on gaentanodinizetti.org
Ticket Prices:
– Roberto Devereux e Don Pasquale: from 120 to 16 euros
– Zoraida di Granada: from 105 to 16 euros
– LU OpeRave: 25 euros
Carnet (set of tickets) weekend
All the tickets for each weekend with a 25% discount
Carnet (set of tickets) Saturdays
Tickets for the three productions on three Saturdays with a 25% discount
Performances will start at 8 p.m. on weekdays and at 3.30 p.m. on Sundays.
