From 2015 to 2024, Donizetti Opera has staged ten editions, focusing on Gaetano Donizetti and his music with courage, vision, rediscovery, study, research, audience involvement, the breaking down of traditional boundaries, and national and international critical acclaim.
From the outset, the Festival has gone beyond the walls of the theatre to enter the city, moving to the Teatro Sociale during the restoration of the Teatro Donizetti, and since 2015 occupying squares, historic buildings, schools, churches, nightclubs, social centres, shops, the airport, and even reaching people in prisons, hospitals and nursing homes. Always with the aim of showing how Gaetano’s music can transcend borders.
This spirit of going beyond limits also meant staging the unexpected, such as when L’Ange de Nisida was staged at the Teatro Donizetti, still under restoration work. This opera had been written by Donizetti but remained unperformed until it was staged in Bergamo in 2019. After the score was reconstructed using documents scattered throughout Europe, the opera broke down the barriers between stage and audience, performers and spectators, scene and backstage. As part of the same informal and unconventional experimentation, contemporary and “digital” productions have been staged, such as L’aio nell’imbarazzo (2022), provocative ones such as Lu OperRave (2023 and 2024), unpredictable ones such as La Favorite (2022) with its “Favorites” on stage, and experimental ones such as Donizetti Alive (2015), and Il Diluvio Universale (2023) featuring Enea Scala and Giuliana Gianfaldoni.
The desire to rediscover the composer’s early work led to the creation of the #Donizetti200 project, which each year brings back to the stage an opera written two centuries ago, often using original period instruments Since 2017, with Pigmalione, the Bergamo composer’s first stage composition, the project has moved on to Enrico di Borgogna, Pietro il Grande, Le nozze in Villa, Chiara e Serafina, Alfredo il Grande, and Zoraida di Granata. The Donizetti Studies Centre has recovered music never heard in modern times, and archival documents that recount the life, art and humanity of the composer.
At the same time, the Festival presented the most famous titles, performed by the greatest singers on the current opera scene: Anna Bolena (2015) with Alex Esposito and Carmela Remigio, who also starred in Lucrezia Borgia with Xabier Anduaga (2019); Marino Faliero (2020) with Michele Pertusi; L’elisir d’amore (2021) with Javier Camarena; La fille du régiment (2021) with Paolo Bordogna and John Osborn; La Favorite (2022) again with Camarena, Florian Sempey and Annalisa Stroppa; Roberto Devereux (2024) with John Osborn and Jessica Pratt; Don Pasquale (2024) with Roberto De Candia and the return of Javier Camarena.
Women have played a central role: singers, divas, anti-divas, but always protagonists on stage, in contact with the audience and behind the scenes, true Donizetti icons. Carmela Remigio and Jessica Pratt have become the face, voice and symbol of Donizetti Opera, also participating as resident artists in titles such as Anna Bolena, Il Castello di Kenilworth, Lucrezia Borgia, Rosmonda d’Inghilterra, and Roberto Devereux.
In 2020, during the pandemic and with theatres closed, Donizetti Opera chose to go ahead with its scheduled performances, albeit behind closed doors. The theatre spaces were turned upside down, with the stalls used as a stage for television recordings, which were broadcast on a Web TV channel with 4,000 subscribers, the only possible contact with the public.
Thanks to the work of great directors and musicians, special projects and fundraising initiatives, numerous awards have been received. Four “Premio Abbiati” (Abbiati Award) from the National Association of Music Critics in Italy: Best Singer to Carmela Remigio and the “Gavazzeni Award” to Corrado Rovaris for Anna Bolena (2015), Special Award to L’Ange de Nisida (2019), Best Production of the Year to La Favorite (2022) conducted by Riccardo Frizza and directed by Valentina Carrasco. The Festival also won the “Oper! Award for Best Festival 2019” from German critics, the “Cultura+Impresa Award 2019-2020” in the Art Bonus Application category for the “Ambasciatori di Donizetti”, a partnership project, and the 2023 Special Prize at the Art Bonus Competition organised by the Italian Ministry of Culture.
For several years now, in June, Donizetti Night has brought the whole city out into the streets to celebrate the composer. From afternoon until late at night, Bergamo’s buildings, courtyards, streets, squares and monuments come alive with almost 100 events, including concerts, shows, screenings and performances themed around Donizetti, with over 500 artists and more than 50,000 attendees in 2023.
The Festival also explored the bond between Donizetti and his mentor Giovanni Simone Mayr through performances, exhibitions, initiatives and educational projects. This relationship is renewed in the Bottega Donizetti, where selected young singers performed Il piccolo compositore di musica (The Little Music Composer), an opera that Mayr wrote for his students, including Gaetano Donizetti, and which was rediscovered in the Mai Library. Other maestros were also remembered, such as Gianandrea Gavazzeni (with an exhibition in 2016) and Riccardo Muti, who was in Bergamo in 2016 with the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella to celebrate 50 years of a career that began in the city. Other great voices such as Juan Diego Flórez and Mariella Devia helped to keep alive the link with quality singing.
Finally, at the heart of the Festival’s activities is its commitment to young people. Thanks to the Education section, the work extends throughout the year with guided tours, workshops, performances, presentations, Donizetti stories told by puppets and an opera summer camp. Each edition of the Festival includes a participatory opera for children and young people, a reduction of a title on the programme designed for them, as for the protagonists of Academy Day 2024 and 2025, with dozens of workshops to discover the theatre professions. Many of them were involved in the Lucia Off project, inspired by the story of Lucia di Lammermoor. They are the future of opera and Donizetti.
