FIO - Festival Informal de Ópera: 3rd edition São João da Madeira

The third edition of FIO (Festival Informal de Ópera) arrives in São João da Madeira in 2028. The municipality covers just 7.94 km², but its industrial history has left deep marks and opens the way to new operatic realities. FIO is organised by Lua Rosa em Sol Menor and dedicated to new opera in Portuguese.

So far it has premiered eight operas, each with an original libretto, score and staging. The core of the festival is the premiere of original operas in small format, both in instrumentation (a small ensemble) and in duration (sessions of roughly 30 to 45 minutes). In 2028, two operas are newly commissioned and the other two are revivals of works from earlier editions. This is deliberate: it treats FIO as a repertoire in construction, growing with each edition and kept alive. 

Local involvement is built into the music itself. Regional orchestras contribute twelve musicians, divided between two ensembles that sustain the operatic creation. In São João da Madeira, the relationship between industry, work and creation offers material for an opera that grows out of places and the people who live in them. Heritage is not treated as a backdrop: its sounds, materials, memories and uses can inform the artistic process. Cultural venues, creative spaces, schools and associations allow professional experimentation to connect with local participation, in forms suited to each project and to each partner's commitments. The festival is the culmination of two years of work, and the creative process is staged accordingly. 

In 2027 the artists meet and begin developing the operas in an artistic residency, which lets them go further than a rehearsal period would. 2028 brings the parts together: rehearsals and premieres. Around the operas, satellite activities give the festival its informal character and lead audiences from one opera to the next. The sound walk, "entre FIOs", draws on an acoustic mapping of the city's architecture and topography, begun at the earliest stage of planning. In 2027 it opens as a pre-listening for deeper knowledge of the city, including through São João da Madeira's tourism office. In 2028 it connects the audience between operas. The opera walks work with local associations, including the choir and the philharmonic band. Each has its own intervention, and together they form a single route under shared curatorship, which also coordinates communication with the associations. This gives local groups visibility and builds audiences before the festival. The round table, part of FIO 2028, is anticipated through reflections published online under the title "a ópera aproxima-se", and through a podcast. 

Education has been present since FIO began. It addresses one of opera's great challenges, the renewal of its audience, by showing that opera is a wide field of possibilities and formats where younger people can find room for fantasy and imagination. The Oficina de Ópera Imediata brings the operatic process into schools: young people who can play an instrument or sing go through the successive stages of creating an opera, and their work is integrated into the festival programme. Radio Operas (Óperas-Rádio) take place in higher education, in a music school, where libretto and composition work comes close to a full opera and the final form is electroacoustic or radiophonic. Ópera de Garagem takes opera to places where it does not usually live: local rock bands recreate and appropriate opera arias. Partnerships are established in 2027 and the project takes place in 2028.