Name: Belisario
Start: 2026-06-14T15:00:00
Location: Gaetano Donizetti Theater

Carmela Remigio

Riccardo Frizza

Simon Lim

Annalisa Stroppa

Celso Albelo

Roberto Frontali

Anaïs Mejías

Klodjan Kacani

Stefano Gentili

Matteo Castrignano

Piermarco Viñas Mazzoleni

Fondazione Teatro Donizetti

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Mascoulisse Quartet presents a project entirely dedicated to Giuseppe Verdi, approached from a historical and profoundly musical perspective.

Mascoulisse Quartet: PROGETTO VERDIANO - VERDI 1901

Gaetano Donizetti Theater

In Byzantium, the chorus announces the return of Belisario, who has triumphed over the Goths. In the meantime, the leader’s wife, Antonina, tells Eutropio about Alessi, the son she and Belisario had and who died as soon as he was born. The slave Proclo had revealed to her that it was Belisario who had ordered him to kill Alessi; but he, not having the heart to do so, had abandoned him on a deserted beach. Antonina is determined to take her revenge by ordering a plot against her husband. Justinian receives his general. Among the prisoners is the young Alamiro, who is set free by Belisario. But Alamiro wants to remain at the side of Belisario, to whom he feels bound by a mysterious bond. Belisario announces that he will keep the young man with him, as if he were his lost son. But in the meantime, Antonina’s revenge is being carried out. While Belisario’s daughter, Irene, embraces her father, Eutropio arrives and publicly accuses him of conspiracy, showing forged documents as proof. Belisario calls Antonina as a witness; she not only confirms the accusation but also forces him to make a more shameful confession: the murder of their son. Belisario tells of a dream, in which Alessi had appeared to him as predestined to ruin their homeland.

Belisario

For over two centuries, the Teatro Donizetti has been more than a performance venue or a landmark in lower Bergamo: it is part of the city’s identity, a place shaped by shared history. A story waiting to be told—and to be experienced from within.

Ti presento il Donizetti

Diva. Divine creature. Goddess of the firmament. That’s how Daria feels when she steps onto the stage. She lives for her audience. But on the brink of opening night, something breaks. Caprices, rivalries, petty intrigues - the queen is under siege. Will the audience she so adores be able to save her from ruin? Find out in this one-of-a-kind show, where spectators take center stage - freely inspired by Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali by Gaetano Donizetti.

Guasta Diva Come distruggere un'opera

A century crossed by a different, necessary look, finally listening. Un siècle en rose is a journey through French music between the 19th and 20th centuries, built around the voices of some of the most significant European composers, who for a long time remained on the margins of the repertoire and today are increasingly recognised for their originality and expressive force.

Agnese Ferraro and Monica Cattarossi: UN SIÈCLE EN ROSE

A concert d’autore. On the programme are famous songs written by some of the great Italian composers, from Gino Paoli to Fabio Concato, from Bruno Martino to Pino Donaggio, and made famous over the years by great national and international performers such as Mina, Ornella Vanoni, Joao Gilberto Gil, and Elvis Presley.

Claudio Angeleri: FROM BE TO POPS

Fatoumata Diawara is among the most intense, powerful and visionary voices in today's African and international world music scene. Originally from Mali, she is a multifaceted artist, singer, musician, composer, actress and dancer: an overwhelming performer, she tells the story of Africa in its wounds and rebirths and transforms each concert into an intense and participatory collective experience. Her music crosses genres with rare naturalness: afrobeat, jazz, electro, pop and rock intertwine while remaining anchored in mandinka rhythms.

Fatoumata Diawara

Lazzaretto

In a programme dedicated to recorder concertos, the name of Antonio Vivaldi is an indispensable reference: the author of an impressive number of concertos, well beyond the famous Four Seasons, Vivaldi shaped a language that profoundly marked 18th-century Europe. Alongside him, composers such as Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Friedrich Fasch and Giovanni Battista Sammartini were able to offer original and refined interpretations of the concerto form, in an extraordinary variety of styles and formal solutions. It is perhaps surprising that the recorder, often considered an instrument with a limited repertoire, should have been the vehicle for such a rich and international production, capable of reflecting different national identities and, at the same time, an authentically European spirit, even verging on the galant style. This programme thus highlights, together, the concerto as a musical form and the recorder as solo instrument, revealing its expressive breadth and vitality. At the heart of this project is also the theme of cultural exchange between Italy and the Netherlands: many of Vivaldi's works were published in Amsterdam at the beginning of the 18th century by the famous publisher Estienne Roger, spreading rapidly throughout Europe and profoundly influencing the musical taste of the time. More than three hundred years later, this ideal dialogue is renewed in the encounter between the flutist Teun Wisse and the Ensemble Locatelli, an artistic partnership born of a shared passion for this repertoire and matured through concerts in various European countries, culminating in a programme designed to celebrate Vivaldi and the immediate and communicative pleasure of a music that, then as now, thrives on energy, exchange and shared joy.

Locatelli Ensemble: FLAUTISSIMO

At the beginning of 1819, Gaetano Donizetti was a 22yearold composer who had just made his debut the previous year . He was linked to the wandering company of the impresario Paolo Zancla and was strongly bound to Bortolomeo Merelli, from Bergamo like him and at the time a librettist, before he became one of the most important and successful Italian impresarios of the nineteenth century. During the Carnival season of 1818-19, Zancla’s company was in Mantua to stage Clotilde by Coccia, which however had a disastrous outcome: the prima donna was thrown on stage not only cooked pears, but even an incendiary piece that luckily only burnt the edge of her costume instead of setting the entire theatre on fire. As a response, Zancla staged Ross ini’s L’italiana in Algeri and summoned to Mantua the young creative couple MerelliDonizetti, who pro duced Le nozze in villa, a typical opera buffa of the time, based on a comedy by Kotzebue translated into Italian as I provinciali. Little is known about the outcome of the opera; it was probably a fiasco, al though it was revived in Treviso in the spring of 1820 and then in Genoa two years later . The work also presents numerous textual problems, starting with the fact that there is no autograph copy, that the musical sources are dispersed and that the quintet of the second act, “Aura gentil, che mormori”, is com pletely missing . As part of the #Donizetti200 pro ject, the Festival will present the first modern perfor mance of this title, which has remained, until today, quite “mysterious” (very few sources speak about it). The quintet is no longer missing, because it was newly by Elio and Rocco Tanica with the collabora tion of Enrico Melozzi. The production is inspired by philological criteria for the musical part, with the use of the tuning fork of the time and “historically informed” instrumentalists, and by references to current events for the scenic part. The aim is to retrieve the satiric and funny work that Donizetti tried to offer to the difficult Mantuan audience, always remaining in the wake of the most illustrious com poser of his time, Rossini, who is the obvious model for the Nozze in Villa. This is a further step in the re discovery of Donizetti’s works, as we are aware that the more Donizetti is known the bettr.

Le nozze in villa

An apparently casual encounter: on the one hand, a text, written notes, at first sight defined, which are nevertheless deliberately left unfinished, lacking a conclusive seal; on the other hand, curiosity and play, as if someone, picking up the lost sheets of paper, were in tune with the writing and tried to complete it, adapting their imagination to what they found to lead to results that are each time unpredictable.

Gianluigi Trovesi and the Gruppo Fiati Musica Aperta GIOCANDO CON LE NOTE

Seasons pass, new talents emerge, yet she remains firmly on the throne: the queen of jazz singing is still, unmistakably, Dee Dee Bridgewater. And a great diva never does anything by chance: her current touring band is an all-female, international lineup, assembled to launch a rallying cry—“We Exist!”. The project brings together protest songs such as Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam,” Gene McDaniels’ “Compared to What,” James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good),” Bob Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody,” and others that are far more than melodies with socially conscious lyrics—they are true musical manifestos, carriers of powerful messages that speak to everyone. Art and activism thus take shape in the multifaceted, refined, and powerful voice of a legend not only of jazz.

DEE DEE BRIDGEWATER We Exist!

After the immersion in the folklore of the Latin countries, the Festival dedicates its 63rd edition to the repertoires and composers of Eastern and Slavic Europe. Alongside the immortal names of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Prokof’ev, &Scaron’ostakovič and Scriabin, the audience will also encounter the voices of Bartók, Dvořák, Janáček and Arvo Pärt in a journey that combines tradition and contemporaneity, as the subtitle expresses.