The festival
The Piccolo Opera Festival promotes opera and vocal music, enhancing the encounter between sound, word and gesture. It takes music out of traditional contexts, enhancing the region's most beautiful venues and reaching a cross-section of audiences. Another important mission is to support young professionals in musical theater.
Who we are.
Visionaries and enthusiasts
without boundaries
The Cultural Association Piccolo Festival del Friuli Venezia Giulia was founded in December 2007 by a group of musicians with the aim of popularizing opera music and, more generally, of raising awareness of the enormous potential of vocal music, of the combination of sound, word and gesture. Among the main statutory purposes is also the formation of a wider audience, who can appreciate the art of singing even outside the designated places: finding new expressive keys of musical theater can meet the tastes and curiosity even of an audience not necessarily accustomed to listening to this genre. Not least, in the statute, is the mission to accompany new musical theater professionals (singers in the first place, but also instrumentalists, directors, technicians).
History
It began with the "great essays," the activities of the Piccolo Opera Festival, which on Dec. 21 of the founding year celebrated the 50-year artistic career of the two great Friulian basses Bonaldo Giaiotti and Alfredo Mariotti. And it was Friuli, in fact, the first setting in which the association moved. Between Reana del Rojale, Tricesimo, Tarcento and other neighboring towns from the beginning, along with music, prose, dance and film performances, the Festival's signature feature was to propose new productions, commissioned ad hoc: this activity - though onerous - is still a prerogative of the Piccolo Opera Festival, which each year signs new opera productions, often involving young artists supported by experienced orchestras and conductors, in the logic of common growth.
From "Una favola per caso" to "Il Barbiere di Siviglia," from "Don Giovanni" to "Madama Butterfly," there are many Piccolo Opera Festival-branded stagings that have involved the likes of Nicola Sani, Ugo Gregoretti, Enrico Stinchelli, Filippo Maria Bressan, Stefano Vizioli, Marko Hribernik, Hirofumi Yoshida and many others in directing and conducting.
Many national and international collaborations fuel the desire to accompany young talents in their growth: from the College of Music at the University of Colorado, to the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, from the Rossini Opera Festival Academy to the Martina Franca Academy.
The first international cooperation dates back to 2011, with the College of Music of the University of Colorado (USA) with which the opera "La cambiale di matrimonio" by Gioachino Rossini was co-produced; the training course for the soloists was led by professors of the American university together with great names of Italian opera such as Alessandro Corbelli and Bonaldo Giaiotti. The year 2012 began with an exciting concert at the Risiera di San Sabba the cooperation with the Jerusalem Opera, a partnership that has continued successfully for many years and has nurtured creativity and young talent in the name of sharing different cultures.
Particularly rich is the program of the 2013 edition called "SempreVerdi" on the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth of the great genius from Busseto. In his honor, "La Cecchina" by Niccolò Piccinni, an opera that Verdi called "the first true opera buffa," was staged at Spessa Castle.
Between 2013 and 2014, a major programmatic breakthrough takes place: since public interest in Verdi's celebrations had come from far beyond its borders, the Association reflects on the opportunity to share vocal, operatic and chamber music with the European music tourism market. Its mission is strengthened as a result, and the dissemination of knowledge of vocal music goes hand in hand with the promotion and development of the area: the Festival's first participation in the Vienna International Tourism Fair was in January 2015, where Piccolo Opera Festival presents its eighth edition with Mozart's "Don Giovanni" performed at San Giusto Castle in Trieste and Villa Manin di Passariano, emblematic locations in the region. The first groups arrived from Austria, which in subsequent editions, thanks to the quality of the program and performers combined with the beauty and historical charm of the venues also gradually increased from Germany, Holland, Luxembourg, and France. "Il barbiere di Siviglia" (2016), "La Cenerentola" (2017), "Le nozze di Figaro" (2018), "L'elisir d'amore" (2019), "Don Pasquale" (2021), "Madama Butterfly" (2022), "La sonnambula" (2023), "Le Villi" (2024), confirm the Festival as a leading summer opera event at the regional level. In addition to the more complex titles, the Festival is committed each year to giving voice to young performers with its own, purpose-built productions of one-acts, operettas and short pages of musical theater, sometimes not too well known: this choice also returns the mission of the Association, which contemplates the utmost attention to young people and the search for new operatic languages
For several years the favorite place of the event has become the beautiful cross-border area Collio / Brda, particularly significant for the border location and the representativeness of the places that, between Italy and Slovenia, return nature, history, architecture, art particularly significant and unique in the world for charm and originality. Since 2022 the venue of choice has been the Teatro di verzura in Spessa Castle, an en plein air theater carved out of a hillside, with the audience arranged on soft steps (similar to the terracing of vines) and the stage at the base of the hillside slope: the orchestra plays in the flat pit, and the wings consist of the soft Collio landscape, the often clear sky, and the majestic oak tree towering behind the performers.
