Teatro Comunale di Bologna
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Season 2026

The full calendar of the last season before the grand return to the historic venue: Opera, Concerts, Dance and Academy.

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The 2027 season of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna marks its return to the historic home in Piazza Verdi after restoration.

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Explore the archive of past seasons year by year and discover the artists who have graced the Comunale’s stage.

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Teatro Comunale di Bologna

Opera

Candide

, , , July 2025

Candide

The opera

Opera Season 2025

Libretto by
Hug Wheeler basato sulla omonima novella di Voltaire
Composer
Leonard Bernstein

Conductor and director

  • Conductor Kevin Rhodes
  • Director Renato Zanella

Characters and cast

Orchestra and chorus

Creative team

Sets
Mauro Tinti
Costumes
Danilo Coppola
Lighting
Paolo Liaci

Details

Production
Nuova Produzione del TCBO con Teatro Verdi Trieste
Information

In 1755 an earthquake devastated Lisbon. Europe was shaken and its intellectuals asked themselves: can one still claim with Leibniz that this is the best of all possible worlds? Voltaire answered bitingly with the tale of Candide, the journey of its innocent hero and of his teacher Pangloss, with his unshakeable optimism. Three centuries later the world had still not recovered from the Second World War and found itself in the Cold War. The United States presented itself as an ideal world while persecuting its own artists and intellectuals. Leonard Bernstein too was a target of McCarthyism, which he in turn held up to ridicule by renewing Voltaire’s satire. A first version in 1956, various textual revisions over the years and a reworking in 1989 confirm — despite the cool critical reception at the première — the vitality of an operetta that is ironic, light and profound, overwhelming in its musical invention, worthy of one of the greatest conductors, composers, communicators and intellectuals of the twentieth century.

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La straniera

22, 24 January 2027

La straniera
Conductor
Fabrizio Maria Carminati
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