2025 Arena di Verona Opera Festival
From 13 June to 6 September 5 operas and 8 special events, for 51 evenings of performances
From 13 June to 6 September, 51 evening events feature the most important performers on the international scene, with hundreds of artists, performers, dancers as well as stage sets that are unique in their attention to details and spectacular productions.
Since 1913, the Arena di Verona, a perfectly preserved ancient Roman amphitheatre, has welcomed up to 12,000 spectators every night. Audiences arrive from all over the world for a unique open-air experience of opera, music and dance.
The Arena di Verona is the greatest open- air theatre in the world. It was built about 2000 years ago, to satisfy the desire of the Roman people for ludus(games). Think in grand style! This is what everybody should do trying to imagine the Opera Festival and the Arena di Verona. Everything in this Amphitheatre is oversize, first of all the stage; 47 metres wide, 30 metres depth and a starry sky as ceiling. Huge Sets, assembled by 150 Stagehands working night and day. The artistic sections: 150 Musicians, 200 Members of the Chorus, 300 Extras and 60 Dancers on stage every evening for a different performance. Over 1,400 people work at the Festival every summer.
Nabucco and Aida
On 13 June, the inauguration will be held with the great choral tableau of Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi. The new production will be entirely created by Stefano Poda, a visionary director in demand by all the most important theatres and winner of the Italian Critics' Prize for Best Show in 2023. Pinchas Steinberg will conduct the Fondazione Arena Orchestra and Chorus and a cast of opera stars. Repeat performances are scheduled until 5 September.
Stefano Poda is also the author of the successful staging of Aida, Verdi's most loved and frequently staged work in the Arena since 1913. His "crystal" Aida, staged from 20 June to 4 September, conducted by Daniel Oren and featuring almost 400 performers on the stage, combines Ancient Egypt and contemporary art, symbolism and high fashion, with unprecedented games of light and transparency that enhance the ancient amphitheatre.
La Traviata, Rigoletto and Carmen
The 2025 Festival continues with Verdi, with two other works from his remarkable repertoire. La Traviata will be staged from 27 June to 2 August in the elegant production by Hugo De Ana, inspired by the Belle Époque and conducted by Speranza Scappucci and Francesco Ommassini. From 8 August to 6 September Rigoletto, in the historic version by Ivo Guerra and Raffaele Del Savio inspired by the designs of the veronese architect Ettore Fagiuoli for its Arena premiere a century ago, conducted by Michele Spotti.
Carmen is in the programme from 4 July to 3 September, in the classic epic production by Franco Zeffirelli conducted by Francesco Ivan Ciampa. In 2025, the Arena will pay tribute to composer Georges Bizet, 150 years after his death (in the same year that his masterpiece was first performed). It is also the 30th anniversary of Zeffirelli’s version at the Arena, a spectacular production with almost 500 artists on stage.
Our artists
Every evening, the best artists on the international scene take to the stage, alongside new emerging talents, making each performance a real ‘premiere’ with an alternation of casts that are difficult to bring together. On the 2025 Festival, to name just a few: Anna Netrebko, Brian Jagde, Amartuvshin Enkhbat, Aleksandra Kurzak, Roberto Alagna, Luca Salsi, Nadine Sierra, Francesco Meli, Ludovic Tézier, Mariangela Sicilia, Yusif Eyvazov, Roberto Tagliavini, Erin Morley, Greogry Kunde, Alexander Vinogradov, Aigul Akhmetshina, Luciano Ganci, Erwin Schrott, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Piotr Beczała, Christian Van Horn, Anita Rachvelishvili, Enea Scala, Luca Micheletti, Rosa Feola, the debuts of Angel Blue, Pene Pati, Marina Rebeka and many more.
Jonas Kaufmann in Opera will be the protagonist of a grand gala event on 3 August, an event dedicated to Italian opera, for which the tenor is one of the most sought-after performers in the world. The full Orchestra and Chorus will perform Orff's Carmina Burana on 15 August, conducted by Andrea Battistoni. In co-production with Balich Wonder Studio, Giovanni Andrea Zanon will lead the Four Seasons as violin soloist in Viva Vivaldi. The Four Seasons Immersive Concert on 27 August. This multimedia show, exactly 300 years after publication of the opera, was welcomed this year by thousands of young people and a standing ovation at its world premiere right here in the Arena.
Ballet
Dance plays a key role in the 2025 programme: a double date on 22 and 23 July is booked for Roberto Bolle and Friends, a show co-produced with Artedanza that expertly combines classical, modern and contemporary, with the La Scala danseur étoile Bolle and principal dancers from the most important theatres around the world. In 2025, the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis would have turned 100; the Fondazione Arena will pay homage to him with his most famous work, Zorba the Greek, an icon of dance at the Arena di Verona, for which it was expressly written. After the 2023 and 2024 sold-outs, the performance will return to the Teatro Romano, this season for three dates: 26, 27 and 31 August.
