With the 98° Opera Festival, the Arena di Verona opens a window on Beauty: Opera meets twelve large Italian museums and parks, which share part of their heritage, becoming part of the stories of Verdi, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Puccini and joining the notes of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. With the patronage of the Ministry of Culture, tradition and history meet innovation on the Verona amphitheatre stage.    

After the stoppage that involved the entire world of culture for over a year, the Arena - the world’s largest open-air theatre – has decided to host Italy’s great art collections - those museums which, being indoor venues, were among the institution hardest hit  by the pandemic. It has done so with ten-minute cameos during the operas and concerts, to offer the public the possibility of once again tasting Italy and restarting to discover the country’s beauty, by means of videos and images that will be screened on the Arena’s over 400 square metres of LED wall.

Here are the details of all the season’s appointments:

CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA - Pietro Mascagni

25 June - 2, 22, 31 July - 14 August

in collaboration with

Vatican Museums - Vatican City

Vatican Apostolic Library - Vatican City

Archaeological and Landscape Park of the Valley of Temples - Agrigento

As well as the protagonists’ burning passions, Cavalleria rusticana presents Sicily’s sun, popular traditions and cults. The age-old religious processions reproduced in the frescoes of the Vatican Museums come to life in the epic landscape of the Valley of Temples, in atmospheres that are well represented by the drawing Le pélerinage des Saintes-Maries de la Mer, created in the same years as Mascagni’s opera and preserved in the age-old patrimony of the Vatican Apostolic Library.

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PAGLIACCI - Ruggero Leoncavallo

25 June - 2, 22, 31 July - 14 August

in collaboration with

National Cinema Museum - Turin

Fellini Museum - Rimini 

Combined with one-act opera by Mascagni is Pagliacci, a masterpiece of theatre within the theatre, which intends paying tribute to the circus world and the cinema of Federico Fellini, thanks to the National Cinema Museum and Rimini’s Fellini Museum. Gelsomina, from the first sketch by the Maestro for his film La Strada, is an iconic part of the visionary world inspired by Fellini that comes to life on Arena’s immense stage on the notes by Leoncavallo.

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AIDA - Giuseppe Verdi

26 June - 1, 9, 15, 21 July - 4, 8, 12, 21, 27 August - 4 September

in collaboration with

Egyptian Museum - Turin

The age-old treasures preserved in the Egyptian Museum take on new life to narrate the precious golden Egypt of Aida, the Arena’s top-ranking opera, which is back in scenic form at the 98^th Opera Festival. Among them, the prestigious Turin institution reveals the mask of Merit: a look that is still intact, both fragile and seductive and whose fascination has lasted over three thousand years.

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NABUCCO - Giuseppe Verdi

3, 17, 24 July - 6, 13, 20, 26 August - 1 September

in collaboration with

National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah - Ferrara

With the great choral fresco of Nabucco, the people’s history follows that of the Jews from the origins to the 1900s thanks to Ferrara’s National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah. Its various private collections bear witness to the events of the Italian communities, symbolized by a rare shot of the Verona Ghetto in the first half of the 1900s: an architectural insight on the city and on history.  

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La Traviata - Giuseppe Verdi

10, 16, 23 July - 7, 19 August - 2 September

in collaboration with

Uffizi Galleries - Florence 

A centuries-long journey through art and beauty in sixteen selected works from the Uffizi Galleries surrounds the marvellous portrait of a lady for Violetta, the protagonist of Verdi's La Traviata. Alaide Banti sdraiata is one of the most beautiful female paintings by Giovanni Boldini, the “painter of ladies” and perhaps the most representative Italian artist of the Belle Époque. 

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VERDI REQUIEM

18 July

in collaboration with

Paestum and Velia Archaeological Park - City of Capaccio-Paestum

Pompeii Archaeological Park - Pompeii

Instants of ancient History and beauty from the Pompeii, Paestum and Velia Archaeological Parks become a timeless monument for Verdi’s Requiem. To represent the great fresco of Verdi’s Requiem the temple of Nettuno was chosen from the Paestum and Velia Archaeological Park, which with the legacy of Pompeii unites the sacred and human aspects of art and Verdi’s masterpiece, both eternal.

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TURANDOT - Giacomo Puccini

29 July - 1, 5, 28 August - 3 September

in collaboration with

Museum of Chinese and Ethnographic Art -  Parma

A fairy-tale China steeped in humanity is the world recreated by Puccini in Turandot: a world that becomes more real, true to life and even more refined with the treasures revealed by the Museum of Chinese and Ethnographic Art, such as that represented by the 19^th century panel which from a monumental Far Eastern screen reached Parma, where it is currently preserved.

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SYMPHONY N. 9 - Ludwig van Beethoven

22 August

in collaboration with

Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia - Florence

Happy people crowding the square: this is the route taken in collaboration with Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia, with shots in which the squares of the world represent the universal embrace of Beethoven’s Symphony N 9. Among them, Piazza del Campo for Siena’s famous Palio race is immortalized in a shot of a century as a message of joy and hope given by Beethoven’s Symphony N 9.

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OTHER SHOWS OF THE 98^th ARENA DI VERONA OPERA FESTIVAL