Set Designer

An all-star cast brings Damiano Michieletto’s white-hot production to life, with Ginger Costa-Jackson and Ramona Zaharia in the fiery title role, alongside Russell Thomas and Valentyn Dytiuk as the jealous and despairing Don José. Sesto Quatrini conducts Bizet’s electrifying and sensual score.

Carmen

Royal Opera House

Cinderella

San Carlo Theatre

Figaro here, Figaro there! The Barber of Seville is everywhere always ready to lend a hand, whether it’s giving someone a haircut or playing matchmaker. Especially when it comes to helping Count Almaviva win the heart of the young Rosina, jealously watched over by her guardian. 

Il Barbiere di Siviglia

Opéra Bastille

The next Music Director of the Teatro alla Scala, Myung-Whun Chung, reaches his eleventh opera title at La Scala (having conducted over 140 concerts both at home and on tour) with this new production of Bizet’s Carmen, a co-production with London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and Madrid’s Teatro Real. Well-versed in French music—also through his work with the Opéra Bastille and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France—Chung leads a cast that is perfectly idiomatic. Alongside Clémentine Margaine in the title role, alternating with Stéphanie d’Oustrac, and Giorgi Manoshvili as Escamillo, the production features Vittorio Grigolo as Don José—a major Italian voice with a strong affinity for the French repertoire— alternating with Matthew Polenzani. Damiano Michieletto and set designer Paolo Fantin reduce local colour to a minimum in order to construct a bare and effective spectacle, focused on the ineluctable fate of the protagonists.

EPSG:4326

Teatro alla Scala

A coup attempt and his best friend a conspirator – yet Tito would rather relinquish his throne than base his power on fear and terror. "La clemenza di Tito" is a work that poses timeless questions about the use of power, guilt, and forgiveness. Mozart's late opera seria contains some of his most fascinating arias and ensembles. The rising tenor Giovanni Sala sings Tito, while Cecilia Bartoli interprets Sesto, one of her signature roles. The historically informed Orchestra La Scintilla performs under the direction of Gianluca Capuano.

La clemenza di Tito

Opernhaus Zürich

Lohengrin

Teatro La Fenice

Teatro dell'Opera di Roma

La Fille du régiment, or the “regiment’s daughter”, is what they call the young Marie, who was found when just a child on the battlefield by soldiers. The troops commit to raising the evidently abandoned girl themselves. A young man of course must soon enter the scene and stir a special interest in her, and the secret of her origins will soon also be revealed. In the best tradition of French opéra comique, with his team of librettists, Gaetano Donizetti created a piece that in a truly original way combines Alpine idyll, patriotic enthusiasm and romantic love with comic situations and heightened conflicts. While Donizetti’s piece was at times extremely popular, the “regiment’s daughter” faded from favour somewhat in the 20th century. It can now be rediscovered, from the famous overture right through to the both amusing and cryptic music, in its first new production at the Bayerische Staatsoper in almost ninety years.

La Fille du régiment

Max-Joseph-Platz

“If Falstaff got thinner, what would he be?” Sir John Falstaff loves food, wine and women – and urgently needs cash to pay off his debts. Despite his advanced age, he considers himself an irresistible heartthrob and writes two identical love letters to Mrs Alice Ford and Mrs Meg Page in order to get his hands on their husbands’ money. But the two women see through his plan and begin to play him at his own game ...

Falstaff

Semperoper Dresden

Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte from the drama El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra by Tirso de Molina, through the libretto Don Giovanni o sia Il convitato di pietra by Giovanni Bertati for Giuseppe Gazzaniga.

Don Giovanni

Carlo Felice Theater

A silk ladder (La scala di seta) enables Giulia to receive her husband, whom she married against her guardian’s wishes, in her room night after night. The fact that three men end up using the silk ladder is one of the unsavory complications of this comedy. Director Damiano Michieletto presents the six-character work as a fast-paced sitcom, true to Rossini’s motto that the everyday must be exaggerated in order for it to become an opera.

The Silk Ladder

Zurich Opera House

Trapped in an unhappy marriage Káťa is drawn into a passionate affair. As a wild storm brews, she is overwhelmed by her actions. Damiano Michieletto’s raw staging cuts to the heart of Káťa’s guilt and despair as she makes a choice between love and life itself.

Káťa Kabanová

Glyndebourne

Damiano Michieletto’s searing production returns, casting a new light on the lust, violence and passion of Bizet’s ever-popular opera.

This impactful opera is an experience unlike anything seen before at the Finnish National Opera. In an uprising on a farm, a group of animals overthrow their farmer’s tyrannical reign. Little by little, their new society begins to mirror human civilisation, and their original principles of equality are cast aside.

Animal Farm

Finnish National Opera and Ballet

Journeying back to his school days, Hoffmann relives his childhood romance with Olympia, a model student in every sense. Doomed love follows him into adulthood, where the dancer, Antonia, is taken from him too soon. Meanwhile, the sensual courtesan Giulietta has her own secret agenda. As memory and fantasy becomes increasingly blurred, will Hoffmann find the enigmatic Stella before it is too late?

The Royal Opera: The Tales of Hoffman (ENCORE) – Cert TBC

Lighthouse, Poole's Centre for the Arts

La Fille du régiment, or the “regiment’s daughter”, is what they call the young Marie, who was found when just a child on the battlefield by soldiers. The troops commit to raising the evidently abandoned girl themselves. A young man of course must soon enter the scene and stir a special interest in her, and the secret of her origins will soon also be revealed. In the best tradition of French opéra comique, with his team of librettists, Gaetano Donizetti created a piece that in a truly original way combines Alpine idyll, patriotic enthusiasm and romantic love with comic situations and heightened conflicts. While Donizetti’s piece was at times extremely popular, the “regiment’s daughter” faded from favour somewhat in the 20th century. It can now be rediscovered, from the famous overture right through to the both amusing and cryptic music, in its first new production at the Bayerische Staatsoper in almost ninety years

Juan Diego Flórez and Leonardo Caimi lead a fantastic cast in Offenbach's dream-like opera.

The Tales of Hoffmann

Why choose when you can have drama, tragedy and comedy all in one evening? Enjoy Puccini's operatic trilogy in Damiano Michieletto's critically acclaimed and Reumert award-winning production.

Il trittico

Copenhagen Opera House

Can you go too far in protecting your child from the dangers of the world? Verdi's Rigoletto tells the story of a father who imprisons his daughter in an attempt to protect her from his depraved employer, the transgressive womaniser Duke of Mantua. In vain, as it turns out when his daughter ultimately falls in love, is seduced and kidnapped.

Rigoletto

National Opera & Ballet

L’elisir d’amore

Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi

Men and women of flesh and blood take centre stage in Cavalleria rusticana as in Pagliacci. Reality becomes theatre and, when the masks come off, theatre becomes reality. In both of these short works, obsessive love and jealousy give rise to violent emotions and passionate musical outbursts. When they brought rural Italy to the opera stage, Pietro Mascagni and Ruggero Leoncavallo inaugurated verismo in music. Director Damiano Michieletto is reprising his 2018 production, which made a lasting impression with its powerful neo-realist transposition to an Italian village in the mid-twentieth century. For her debut at La Monnaie, conductor Alevtina Ioffe promises to bring out the emotional depth of these scores with their unparalleled dramatic force.

Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci

La Monnaie - De Munt

An elderly and wealthy bachelor, Don Pasquale, takes it into his head to marry a young girl – something he denies his nephew Ernesto, already engaged to the charming (but penniless) Norina.

Fortunately, Doctor Malatesta concocts a clever stratagem to force him to change his mind. A fake marriage, a sweet bride turned harpy and a misunderstanding later, order is restored, in perfect keeping with the traditional framework of the commedia dell’arte.

Set Designer

Paolo Fantin

Events

Upcoming events

Apr 26, 2026 - Mar 21, 2027

La clemenza di Tito · Opernhaus Zürich

Apr 26, 2026 - Mar 21, 2027

La clemenza di Tito · Opernhaus Zürich

Oct 29 - Nov 21, 2026

Carmen · Royal Opera House

12 - 21 Feb, 2027

L’elisir d’amore · Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi di Trieste

14 - 31 Mar, 2027

Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci · La Monnaie / De Munt

Past events

Oct 29 - Nov 21, 2026

Carmen · Royal Opera House

20 - 27 Oct, 2026

Cinderella · Teatro di San Carlo

About

Paolo Fantin hasn't added a bio