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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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Teatro Comunale di Bologna

Opera

Idomeneo

, , January · February 2026

Idomeneo

The opera

Opera Season 2026

Composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Conductor and director

Characters and cast

Chorus

  • Chorus Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Comunale di Bologna
  • Chorus master Gea Garatti Ansini

Creative team

Sets
Dario Gessati
Costumes
Marianna Carbone
Lighting
Daniele Naldi

Details

Production
New staging of Teatro Comunale di Bologna
Information

Based on the libretto of the same name by Antoine Danchet for the tragédie lyrique Idoménée (Paris 1712) by André Campra.
«Out of the sea I have a sea within my breast, more deadly than the first», sings Idomeneo in the throes of the cruellest torment: at the mercy of a terrible storm he vowed to Neptune, in exchange for his own salvation, to sacrifice the first human being he met on dry land. But the first person to run to him is his only son, Idamante.

When Idomeneo, re di Creta had its première in Munich on 29 January 1781, Mozart had turned twenty-five two days earlier. He already had a musician’s lifetime behind him, while his life as a man was only beginning, and yet he knew how to make this mature drama of a ruler and a father his own. It is also, for that matter, the drama of a new generation crushed by the shadow and the inheritance of its fathers. Idamante, heir to the throne and designated victim, loves Ilia and is loved in return, but he is the son of a victorious Achaean commander and she is a prize of war as the daughter of Priam, king of Troy. Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, is consumed by jealousy and by passion for Idamante. All of them are victims of untameable feelings and of a fate too large for them. All of them human. And here Mozart is Mozart, the genius able to translate humanity into music and to turn a sea in storm into an inner tumult, a psychological drama in the form of myth.

A journalist, writer and music populariser, he works with the Bologna newsroom of Repubblica and is on the editorial staff of the monthly Classic Voice. For Newton Compton he has published ten books on the history of Bologna. He writes for the stage and works as an essayist and lecturer with the most important Italian opera and symphonic institutions. OPERA CALENDAR 2026

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