| Sunday 15 November 2026 | 15:30 |
| Friday 20 November 2026 | 20:00 |
| Saturday 28 November 2026 | 20:00 |
| Fondazione Donizetti | ||
| Alberto Zanardi | Conductor | |
| Silvia Paoli | Director | |
| Eleonora De Leo | Set Designer | |
| Ilaria Ariemme | Costume Designer | |
| Fiammetta Baldiserri | Lighting Designer | |
| Orchestra Donizetti Opera | ||
| Coro dell'Accademia Teatro alla Scala | ||
| Salvo Sgrò | Choirmaster / chorus director | |
| Artists from Bottega Donizetti | Vocals | |
| Elene Gvritishvili | Soprano | Daria Garbinati |
| Paolo Bordogna | Bass-baritone | Donna Agata Scanagalli |
| Filip Filipović | Tenor | Guglielmo Antolstoinoff |
| Mattia Venni | Bass-baritone | Impresario |
| Veronica Prando | Soprano | Luigia Castragatti |
| Giovanni Accardi | Bass-baritone | Biscroma Strappaviscere |
| Giulio Iermini | Bass | Cesare Salzapariglia |
| Omar Cepparolli | Bass | Director of the theatre |
| Giacomo Nanni | Bass | Procolo |
An opera troupe gathers in the theatre of a small Italian town to rehearse the serious melodrama scheduled for the local fair season. The libretto—by none other than Metastasio—has been clumsily adapted by a local hack poet, then set to music by an even more provincial composer. As for the singers, they may be second-rate, but they carry themselves with all the airs and demands of true stars. And so the stage quickly fills with squabbles between rival prima donnas, grumbling from the disgruntled, and a harried poet and composer struggling to satisfy everyone’s whims—not to mention meddling mothers and intrusive husbands.
Donizetti composed this one-act farce in 1827 for Naples, with spoken dialogue and a dialect role. To make the work travel beyond the Neapolitan stage, he returned to it in 1831, expanding it to two acts, replacing the spoken scenes with sung recitatives, and rewriting the entire piece in standard Italian.
Tickets from €38,00 - €120,00
