Thank you, Comunale Nouveau

Thank you, Comunale Nouveau

All the stage technicians, lined up on stage for one last photograph: this is the image with which Teatro Comunale di Bologna says goodbye to the Comunale Nouveau, its home from February 2023 to June 2026 while the historic building in Piazza Verdi was being restored. It was they, together with the Orchestra and the Chorus, who turned a pavilion built for other purposes into a theatre.

Over these years the Nouveau hosted 36 opera titles and 18 dance titles, 220 curtain-ups and more than 200,000 attendances. Among the evenings worth remembering is the Verdi Gala of 26 February 2023 for “Viva Verdi!”, the Ministry of Culture’s project supporting the acquisition of Villa Verdi at Sant’Agata: Daniel Oren on the podium, in a sold-out hall, with Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano in attendance.

Above all the Nouveau was a meeting place. The hall filled with under-30s and university students, and the Theatre was able to reach the wider public of the metropolitan area.

The farewell came in June with Nino Rota’s Napoli milionaria, the last opera staged at the Nouveau, and with Cluster by Edward Clug with the Maribor Ballet.

As we take our leave of this venue, our thanks go to the City of Bologna, which offered us so valuable a home for the whole duration of the works; to BolognaFiere, for the work done above all in the early phase, when the theatre took shape in a matter of months; and to Bologna Congressi, for the close, day-to-day collaboration built up over these years.

Now we are preparing to return to Piazza Verdi, with the Sala Bibiena due to reopen in February 2027. We will take the legacy of the Nouveau with us: a younger and wider audience, and the certainty that theatre lives wherever there are people who make it and people who listen to it.