Rome Opera: Mariotti and Michieletto make their Wagner debut
The Rome Opera opens its new season with a Wagnerian opera, tackled for the first time by its three principal performers: music director Michele Mariotti, director Damiano Michieletto, and tenor Dmitry Korchak. After a 50-year absence, Lohengrin returns to the Teatro Costanzi on November 27 at 5:00 PM. Korchak is joined by Clive Bayley (Heinrich der Vogler), Tómas Tómasson (Friedrich von Telramund), Ekaterina Gubanova (Ortrud), Andrei Bondarenko (Der Heerrufer), and Jennifer Holloway (Elsa). The new production, a co-production with the Palau de les Arts in Valencia and La Fenice in Venice, is designed by Michieletto and his creative team: Paolo Fantin (sets), Carla Teti (costumes), and Alessandro Carletti (lighting). The dramaturgy is by Mattia Palma. The Rome Opera Orchestra and the Chorus, conducted by Ciro Visco, will perform alongside the Opera Chorus. The opening night will be broadcast by Rai Cultura, delayed on Rai5 at 10:20 PM, and live on Radio3. "Opening with Lohengrin means, above all, celebrating the collective effort," says Mariotti. "It's a project that puts singers, orchestra, chorus, and all the staff in the spotlight and demonstrates how the theater is truly a unique organism, whose strength comes from shared work. From the beginning of my tenure as music director, we set ourselves a precise path: each opening has featured a different composer, with the idea of building a theater capable of speaking to an audience curious and open to engaging with different languages." Wagner, the conductor remarks, "represented a natural fit. Lohengrin combines historical drama and legend, and the score itself reflects this dual nature: on the one hand, the solemn solidity that recalls the political and choral context, on the other, the suspended and visionary writing that opens to a fairytale and transcendent dimension." In the 2025/26 season of the Fondazione Capitolina Mariotti will also conduct Rossini's Tancredi directed by Emma Dante (19-29 May 2026), Verdi's Falstaff with the Italian debut of director Tatiana Gürbaca (13 October-1 November 2026) and three concerts (28 May, 17 October and 22 October 2026). For Damiano Michieletto, this is the second season opening at the Costanzi, after Berlioz's La damnation de Faust, which won the Abbiati Prize for best production of 2017. "This production of Lohengrin," he says, "represents a very important milestone for me, because it's the first time I've tackled Wagner. His dramaturgy, which has always fascinated me for its profound spiritual dimension, requires a great deal of commitment in managing the long, drawn-out narrative. My approach to this opera, to create a staging that had warmth and concreteness, was therefore to restore the characters' humanity. Not to treat them as symbols, but as people, with their own psychology, a heart, an internal conflict, and then develop these aspects within a broader dynamic. On the one hand, there's a struggle between the individual and the masses, on the other, there's a love story, that between Elsa and Lohengrin." The opera will have four performances until December 7.
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