Chiara e Serafina

The rediscovery of the 2022 DO is certainly Chiara e Serafina, the title of the #Donizetti200 project, with which in every edition of the Festival we present an opera written by Donizetti two hundred years earlier. In 1822, with Chiara e Serafina 25-year-old Gaetano made his debut at La Scala. For contingent reasons, due above all to Felice Romani’s considerable delay in delivering the libretto, which forced the composer to work even faster than usual, this semi-serious opera was a “fiascone decisissimo” (‘a huge fiasco’), to quote another of Donizetti’s librettos, that of Le convenienze e inconvenienze teatrali. Since then, Chiara e Serafina has never been performed. At the Teatro Sociale, the Festival offers this opera the chance to take a curtain call without the inconveniences of a world premiere, entrusting it to a company of young singers and to the Choir of the Accademia del Teatro alla Scala, with the great Pietro Spagnoli as chaperone in the role of Don Meschino. On the podium, a rising Italian conductor, Sesto Quatrini; direction, set designs and costumes by Gianluca Falaschi; the orchestra Gli Originali continues its exploration of the original instruments of Donizetti’s time.