Piccolo Opera Festival 2027: Enchantment

In 2027 the Piccolo Opera Festival celebrates its 20th edition. From 17 June to 4 July, opera returns to the castles, villas, vineyards and squares of the Collio and of the border between Italy and Slovenia, around Gorizia and Nova Gorica. The theme of the edition is “Enchantment”: the power of singing to create other worlds, and a playful reflection on the thin line between what is real and what is only made to look real. The opening production is Il mondo della luna by Joseph Haydn, presented 250 years after its first performance at Eszterháza. In Goldoni’s comedy, a fake astronomer convinces the gullible Buonafede that he has travelled to the moon: a story of illusion and deception that speaks directly to our age of constructed realities. The new staging premieres on 17 June at the Teatro di Verzura of Castello di Spessa, an open-air theatre set in the castle park, and returns on 21 June for the Young People’s Night, an evening dedicated to younger audiences.

The second production is La Tragédie de Carmen, Peter Brook’s legendary concentrated version of Bizet’s opera. It is previewed on 22 June with Carmen in piazza, an open-air opera celebration in the heart of Gorizia, and then performed on 29 June and 1 July at Castello di Spessa, with a further performance planned at the amphitheatre of the Slovenian National Theatre in Nova Gorica.

Fifty years after the death of Maria Callas, the festival pays tribute to the great soprano with “Maria Callas. I am in the music I sing”, a portrait in words and music for singer, actress and piano, presented on 18 June at Vila Vipolže in the Slovenian Brda hills and on 19 June at Palazzo Coronini in Gorizia. The most innovative project of the edition is I piaceri della carne (The Pleasures of the Flesh), a new “street food opera” commissioned from composer Federico Gon and librettist Alberto Mattioli. A traditional cook and a vegan girl clash in seven musical numbers until the audience settles the quarrel. The stage is a cargo bike built for the show: no theatre, no fixed set, zero emissions. After its world premiere, the opera tours the squares of the region and travels to festivals in Koper (Slovenia) and Buje (Croatia), with surtitles and passages in the languages and dialects of the border, as part of the project Opera on Wheels.

Two complementary sections extend the festival beyond its main productions. Serenades in the Vineyard (20, 23, 28 and 30 June) brings evening concerts among the vineyards of the Collio, with crossover programmes of opera, musicals and song. Goldoni Cafè (20 and 27 June, 4 July) offers matinées with wine tastings and musical insights into the world of Carlo Goldoni, who passed through nearby Vipava in 1726. Young artists are at the heart of the festival. The GO! Borderless Opera Lab, the festival’s international academy, trains young singers from many countries and gives them the chance to perform in the festival’s productions. The festival also brings music to places where people cannot easily go to the theatre: care homes and Gorizia prison, where a preview of the new street food opera is being planned, and music projects in hospitals are in preparation.

The Piccolo Opera Festival is a member of Opera Europa, the European Festivals Association and Italiafestival. With performances in Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, it is a cross-border festival that combines opera, landscape, food and wine and the multicultural heritage of a region at the heart of Europe.