A rich programme for the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, which with Volti del Potere, the 2024-25 season, returns with the magic of opera, ballet and great music on the stage of the historic Costanzi Theatre.
The programme includes 11 new productions, of which 9 operas and 2 ballets, for a total of 12 opera titles, 7 ballets and 6 concerts for a programme that sees the debut of international directors, famous choreographers, great conductors and opera stars, as well as the usual summer festival, entrusted to director Damiano Michieletto, and a series of consolidated and expanded initiatives.
OPERA
The season starts on 27 November with Giuseppe Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, conducted by Michele Mariotti, directed by Richard Jones and featuring an extraordinary Italian cast, including Luca Salsi, Eleonora Buratto and Michele Pertusi. Then, it continues with Tosca, Giacomo Puccini's most dramatic opera, on stage from 14 to 19 January - 125 years after its premiere on the stage of the Roman theatre - then from 1 to 6 March and from 9 to 13 May, in the original setting of the first performance. From 16 to 23 February, Lucrezia Borgia, Gaetano Donizetti's noir masterpiece, returns after 45 years in a new production directed by Valentina Carrasco and conducted by Roberto Abbado. From 18th to 26th March, Rinaldo Alessandrini conducts Alcina, Händel's baroque masterpiece, in its premiere at the Costanzi, produced in collaboration with De Nationale Opera in Amsterdam, with the direction of Pierre Audi and the voices of soprano Mariangela Sicilia and countertenor Carlo Vistoli. From 23 April to 2 May, Spanish director Calixto Bieito makes his debut at the Teatro dell'Opera with Suor Angelica/Il prigioniero, the third and final stage of the "Trittico Ricomposto" project.
From 5 to 12 June, Sesto Quatrini also makes his debut on the podium of the Costanzi for Rossini's masterpiece L'italiana in Algeri, with the splendid and colourful sets by Emanuele Luzzati, costumes by Santuzza Calì, and the direction by Maurizio Scaparro, revived by Orlando Forioso. From 21 to 28 June, Bizet's Carmen returns to the stage in the evocative 1970 staging with sets and costumes by Renato Guttuso, musical direction by Omer Meir Wellber, the voice of Gaëlle Arquez, and direction by Fabio Ceresa, making its debut at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma.
Deborah Warner returns to directing with Britten's masterpiece The Turn of the Screw, directed by Henrik Nánási and starring English tenor Ian Bostridge, scheduled from 19 to 28 September 2025. From 9 to 16 October 2025, the great director Peter Sellars debuts at the Costanzi with Adriana Mater, the opera by Kaija Saariaho, presented for the first time in Italy as a tribute to the great Finnish composer who died in 2023, directed by Ernest Martínez Izquierdo. From 26 to 31 October 2025, in the splendid space of the Baths of Diocletian, Michele Mariotti takes the podium again for the Stabat Mater, with direction, sets, costumes and lights by the great Romeo Castellucci.
A series of titles are specially conceived for the Teatro Nazionale, where, from 14 to 23 May, Il re pastore, composed by a very young Mozart to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio, is staged, followed by the diptych Il diario di uno scomparso by Janáček and La voix humaine by Poulenc, performed in the piano version by Donald Sulzen, from 18 to 24 October 2025.
BALLET
The new ballet season opens with Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, from 15 to 24 December, interpreted by stars Madison Young and Julian MacKay, in Paul Chalmer's vision, with sets by Andrea Miglio, costumes by Gianluca Falaschi and musical direction by Andrea Quinn, for the first time on the podium of the Costanzi. From New Year's Eve to 5 January, the lively atmosphere of the Belle Époque enchants the stage of the Costanzi with Il pipistrello, created in 1979 by Roland Petit and based on the operetta by Johann Strauss Jr., interpreted for the occasion by étoile Rebecca Bianchi and principal dancer Federica Maine. From 26 to 31 January, the spotlight is on the Corps de Ballet of the Theatre and Javier Rojas of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, making his debut at the Costanzi, presenting Carmen in a reading by Jiří Bubeníček, with musical direction by Manuel Coves. The Trittico di danza returns and doubles for the new season. The first appointment is scheduled from 2 to 5 March at the Nuvola dell'EUR with a new creation and two works from 2023, for the first time in Italy: starting with In Esisto by Vittoria Girelli, followed by S by Philippe Kratz, winner of the Premio Danza&Danza 2019 as best choreographer, and then Creature, Francesco Annarumma's creation based on the Sonata no.1 "The 12th Room" by Ezio Bosso. From 3 to 9 April, it is the turn of Onegin, John Cranko's masterpiece directed by Philip Ellis, staged at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma after an absence of almost thirty years, with Nicoletta Manni, étoile of the Teatro alla Scala, and Friedemann Vogel. From 20 to 25 May, at the Teatro Costanzi, three great names of the contemporary scene - Dawson/Lightfoot - León/Ekman - present the second appointment of the triptych: Four Last Songs, a work of 2023 by David Dawson, composed on the cycle of Lieder by Richard Strauss; Subject to Change, a 2003 creation by Paul Lightfoot and Sol León on music by Schubert; Cacti, a 2010 creation by Alexander Ekman, conducted by Benjamin Pope, in his debut on the podium of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. From 25 to 31 October 2025, as a tribute to the late Pierre Lacotte, the title Marco Spada closes the ballet season with the conduction of David Garforth and featuring stars Olga Smirnova of the Het Nationale Ballet in Amsterdam, Igor' Cvirko of the Bol'šoj Theatre and Iana Salenko of the Staatballett Berlin.
CONCERTS
On the schedule are numerous appointments with great symphonic music and the most prestigious batons, starting on 7 November 2024 with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra of London extraordinary tour date, which anticipates the season's official opening by performing Sibelius' Symphony No. 1 and Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra. Maestro Michele Mariotti takes the podium on 8 December for Franz Schubert's Entr'acte No. 3, Mahler's Kindertotenlieder cycle and Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 Eroica, accompanied by baritone Markus Werba and Sergio Rubini's narrator voice in the reading of texts by Giacomo Leopardi, and on 22 March for Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem. On 28 April, the Orchestra Nazionale Barocca dei Conservatori, conducted by Ignazio Maria Schifani, performs Alessandro Scarlatti's La gloria di primavera for the 300th anniversary of the composer's death. On 10 May, James Conlon conducts Šostakovič's Symphony No. 5 in D minor op. 47, commemorated on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor op. 67, whereas, on 26 September 2025, Diego Ceretta makes his debut at the Costanzi, performing Brahms' Concerto in D major for violin and orchestra, op. 77 with Dvořák's Symphony No. 7, with Marc Bouchkov as solo violinist.
Photo: The audience at Rome Opera House - ph. Fabrizio Sansoni
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