Teatro Regio is back on the scene with a parade of stars

It is with great emotion that we finally return to talk to you about what we love making: Music! 

And it is also with great satisfaction that we announce the extraordinary companions who will be joining us: some for the first time, some after a long absence. 

«There is a wonderful luxury that music gives: the intensity in its delicacy, that knowing how to play softly and intensely, which Toscanini urged. It is also a way of life. Feel the simple, profound difference between screaming "I love you" or whispering it».

These words pronounced by Riccardo Muti express all the joy we feel in announcing that for the first time in our Theater, the Maestro will conduct Teatro Regio Torino Orchestra and  Chorus, and that Gianandrea Noseda will return to the podium to conduct the Christmas Concert. And what's more, Donato Renzetti will close 2020 with the Year-End Concert and Daniel Oren will inaugurate 2021 with La bohème.

Therefore Teatro Regio can finally flex its muscles, after the fruitful "training" with streaming on Regio ALive, which has shown how high the attention to our production is - albeit online - and how much our audience follows us with passion, so much so that, for two months now, not a day has passed without someone making a gift of their voucher or a donation to Regio. A gesture that takes on even more value given this time of great economic difficulty. In this regard, we would like to thank all those who have supported us with donations and those who constantly support us such as public institutions, the Friends of Teatro Regio, and our Members, who have decided, even in this "annus horribilis", not to make us lack their support. In particular, for the Christmas Concert and the Year-End Concert, we can count on the partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo, a Founding Member of the Theater, which continues its commitment to Regio consolidating the Bank's lengthy collaboration alongside Teatro Regio in the realization of its productions. 

We begin on Wednesday, December 23 at 6 pm with the Christmas Concert in live streaming: the first appointment of this new program is with an artist linked to Regio for a decade and loved by the audience, the Maestro Gianandrea Noseda, who returns to direct Teatro Regio Torino Orchestra and Chorus of in a concert that will be in live streaming on www.teatroregio.torino.it. Special thanks for supporting this concert go to Joseph Oughourlian, who has been with us for more than a decade, already as one of the founders of the Friends of Teatro Regio Association. The streaming is free and it will be our Christmas present to the entire audience. The “Christmas Concert” will remain available on our website, so if you don't want to unwrap our gift on the 23rd, you can open it whenever you wish. Commissioner Rosanna Purchia and Maestro Noseda have decided to dedicate this concert to Fiorenzo Alfieri, who recently passed away, and regarding his return to Regio, Maestro Noseda stated: «With great trepidation, I am about to direct Teatro Regio Torino Chorus and Orchestra in a Christmas program that aims to be a balm for souls troubled by the current difficult moment, and hope for a future to be rebuilt collectively. Being reunited with artists and friends with whom I spent important years of my life is a reason for joy and great emotion. However, I cannot hide the pain of the loss of a beloved person: Fiorenzo Alfieri. I wish to dedicate this concert to his memory as a sign of profound gratitude for the values that Fiorenzo embodied and for which he lived with commitment and courage: loyal friendship, love for education and culture, and service to the municipal institutions. My hope is that all of this can continue to live through our commitment and our sense of responsibility, that the memory of Fiorenzo will always be present in our hearts and that his ideals can continue to guide our path».

The "Christmas Concert" program ranges from a choral work by Martin Luther to one by Bach, both in its original form and a version re-orchestrated by Stravinsky, to Mozart with his Ave Verum Corpus and Symphony no. 40, up to the Concertino for Christmas Eve written by the Milanese composer Niccolò Castiglioni in 1952, an example of his refined skills as an orchestrator. The Chorus Master is Andrea Secchi.

The year comes to an end with the leitmotif of gifts: great free music for everyone, because we think it is important to give the opportunity to enjoy an excellent performance to the greatest number of people. The immortal notes are a way to mend the soul and good for the heart. Thursday, December 31 at 3 pm, one of the most important artists of his generation, an undisputed reference point for many young conductors as well as a passionate friend of the our Theater, will be a guest on the Regio stage for the Year-End Concert in a live streaming always visible on the Regio website: Maestro Donato Renzetti who, with the Regio Orchestra, will present a broad and varied program that embraces the Baroque period with Charpentier and Handel, the eighteenth century with Mozart, the nineteenth century with Rossini, von Suppé, Strauss jr., Bizet, Čaikovskij, and Borodin, arriving at twentieth-century atmospheres with De Falla, Warlock, and Respighi's re-orchestration of Rossini's La boutique Fantasque. 

January will instead be the month that marks the return of lyric opera to Teatro Regio, and we'll start off with La bohème by Puccini, our symbolic opera that we will finally be able to see in the new staging that unites the direction by Paolo Gavazzeni and Piero Maranghi with sets and costumes taken from the original sketches by Adolf Hohenstein, designed for the world premiere in 1896 in Turin. As you will remember, this staging - created by Teatro Regio - should have been performed in March and was then rescheduled in this month of December, but Covid-19 continues to impose the closure of the Theater. Unfortunately, in January we will not yet have the opportunity to open Teatro Regio to the public and, therefore, we have decided to record the opera together with Sky's Classic HD Channel 136, which will air it on Saturday, January 23 at 9 pm; instead, on Monday, February 1, the day of the 125th anniversary of its world premiere, it will be available in streaming on www.teatroregio.torino.it at 8 pm at a cost of €5. Tickets to attend La bohème online will be on sale starting today, December 21, on www.teatroregio.torino.it; those in possession of a voucher can use it for this purchase, choosing it as a form of payment and entering the code.  
The Israeli Maestro Daniel Oren will conduct Teatro Regio Torino Orchestra and Chorus. La bohème, Giacomo Puccini's most beloved opera, will be interpreted by a cast of young voices, perfectly suited to their role, such as Maria Teresa Leva, Iván Ayón Rivas, Paola Antonucci, Massimo Cavalletti, Alessio Cacciamani, Tommaso Barea, and Matteo Peirone. This new production has been made with the support of Italgas, a Founding Partner of Teatro Regio as well as a historic Turin company. 

February will bring a great and undoubtedly very pleasant surprise: Maestro Riccardo Muti who, for the first time in our theater, will direct Teatro Regio Torino Orchestra and Chorus. We are honored to host a “music myth”. On stage, Così fan tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart directed by Chiara Muti, a 2018 co-production with the San Carlo Theater in Naples and the Wiener Staatsoper. The all-Italian sextet of the protagonists is composed of Mariangela Sicilia, Paola Gardina, Alessandro Luongo, Giovanni Sala, Francesca Di Sauro, and Marco Filippo Romano. For the Maestro, this work is «a mysterious universe full of ambivalences, projected towards a disenchanted and cynical end»; the director stated that she interprets Da Ponte's libretto as «a metaphysical text on the profound question of the ego in relation to  others». The sets are by Leila Fteita, the costumes by Alessandro Lai.    

We hope that an event of such high prestige can be applauded by the audience in the theater; this would be a true manifesto of rebirth, a new beginning under the sign of a great star, an indication of a return to normality that increasingly has the character of the extraordinary.

Given the continuing uncertainty regarding the opening of the Theater to the public, we have worked on three hypotheses: the first, if it were possible to have the total capacity of the hall, provides for 5 performances in February; the second, in the case of a limited capacity, the same five performances would be added to the transmission in streaming of the opera thanks to RMMUSIC (www.riccardomutimusic.com/) the company that holds the registration and image rights of Riccardo Muti and that allows the streaming; the third hypothesis, if unfortunately, the closure is still imposed, in addition to the streaming broadcast of Così fan tutte, there would be an extraordinary concert with the Regio Orchestra directed by maestro Riccardo Muti and broadcast in streaming.

On  December 22 and 23, you will have a unique opportunity to buy Christmas gifts for your loved ones. With the pop-up initiative, "Give Regio as a gift", you can buy beautiful items signed by Regio, or open tickets for when it will be possible to return to attend the performances in the Theater. Purchases can be made at the Theater Box Office, in Piazza Castello 215, open from 12 to 6 pm. 
This is usually a time of good wishes and this year more than ever, we all feel we need them. Therefore please receive from the Extraordinary Commissioner of Teatro Regio Rosanna Purchia, the Artistic Director Sebastian F. Schwarz, and all the Workers at Teatro Regio our best wishes for a serene 2021.