Fondazione Arena di Verona presents the 2026 Artistic Season at the Teatro Filarmonico

It promises to be a busy year, full of exciting challenges. Fondazione Arena di Verona presents the 2026 Artistic Season at the Teatro Filarmonico: 42 evenings of opera, dance and symphonic concerts, which will be joined by open rehearsals for schools, shows for children and families, courses for treble voices and numerous off-site appointments, from Aida performances in Australia to the symphonic concert tour of the cities of the Veneto. 

A special year in which Verona will be the centre of international attention both for the first trip of an entire opera house to the other side of the world, to Australia, and for the Olympic ceremonies in the Arena. Because of the important collaborations and the presence of performers from elsewhere in Italy and abroad in Verona, the 2026 season will be organised in a structured calendar featuring various different venues.

The Opera and Ballet Season consists of 7 productions: 5 operas and 2 ballets. As part of the firmly established Mozart Festival of Verona, from 18 to 25 January - Mozart month - Don Giovanni will return to the stage at Fondazione Arena. In February, the curtain will go up on a special new baroque production at Teatro Ristori: from 23 February to 1 March, coinciding with the ceremonies of the Winter Olympics, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées’s production of Vivaldi's L’Olimpiade will be performed, with a special invitation-only premiere on 21 February. From 22 to 29 March, the Arena’s artistic and technical ensembles will return to the Teatro Filarmonico for Verdi’s masterpiece Falstaff, a year after the staging of the same opera by Salieri; it will be performed by the Teatro Regio di Parma.

As ever, the curtain of the Filarmonico will go down during the summer months, the opera returning to the stage from 25 October to 1 November with Menotti’s Amelia Goes to the Ball, performed for the first time at the Teatro. This will be preceded by a new Fondazione Arena di Verona production of the Stravinsky ballet Jeu de cartes. Two absolutes firsts for Verona. From 22 to 29 November it will be the turn of the most recent Veronese production of Puccini’s La Bohème. After 6 sell-out evenings last year, Swan Lake  will return from 13 to 31 December and in 2026 will also be performed on the stage of the Teatro Regio di Parma. The deep dive meetings held in collaboration with the Accademia Filarmonica di Verona have also been confirmed for 2026: at 6 p.m. on Thursdays before premieres, musicologists and journalists will tell the story of the opera in the Sala Veranda. Carla Moreni, Alberto Mattioli, Giovanni Gavazzeni, Giuliano Danieli, Fabio Sartorelli and Valentina Bonelli will chat with the public, exploring the plots and backstories of the various operas and ballets on the programme, as well as lots of other interesting anecdotes. The meetings will be free of charge.

Following the major events that will involve Verona and Fondazione Arena in the first months of 2026, the Concert Season will begin in the spring with 8 season pass concerts, each of which performed twice and, in many cases, also a third time in different cities of the Veneto (Rovigo, Treviso, Schio, Vicenza). The programmes will range from the 18th century to the contemporary, with a particular focus on the late Romantic period and the 20th century, while also including brand new works. The complete symphonies of great composers begun in recent years (such as Mahler, Bartók, Brahms) will also continue. The programme will feature two key cornerstones that have proved very popular with the public: the great symphonic-choral works (Rossini, for the first time with orchestra, and Beethoven, first performance by the Arena ensembles) and the presence of leading world-renowned soloists and conductors in dialogue with the artistic and technical ensembles of Fondazione Arena.

The expected artists - many of whom making their debut at the Teatro Filarmonico - include, in order of appearance: conductors Francesco Lanzillotta, Giulio Prandi, Giuseppe Grazioli, Francesco Ommassini, Gianna Fratta, Patrick Lange, Sebastiano Rolli, Oleg Caetani, Ramón Tebar, Lü Jia, Wolfram Christ, Alpesh Chauhan, Dmitri Jurowski; directors Enrico Stinchelli, Emmanuel Daumas, Jacopo Spirei, Filippo Tonon, Stefano Trespidi; musicians Inmo Yang, Johannes Moser, Marc Bouchkov, Aleksandr Malofeev, Sergej Nakarjakov, and great international opera soloists alongside emerging young talents. 

For Opera and Ballet, the usual 4 season pass slots are confirmed (Sunday premieres at 3.30 p.m., Sunday repeat performances at 3.30 p.m., Wednesday evening at 7 p.m. and Friday evening at 8 p.m.), as are the 2 Concert slots (Friday evening at 8 p.m. and Saturday afternoon at 5 p.m.). Fondazione Arena will also offer several carnet options at special prices (3 tickets for the Opera, 2 for the Ballet, 3 for Concerts) that can be used for multiple admissions on the same evening or on different dates, and the hybrid Friday in the audience formula, which will allow you to explore the 2026 artistic season with 3 operas and 4 concerts. You can renew your season pass between 14 October and 16 November at the Arena di Verona ticket offices: both the central ticket office in Via Dietro Anfiteatro and the office at Via Roma 1 at the entrance to Sala Filarmonica. From 18 November it will be possible to buy new season passes and carnets, while on 25 November the sale of individual tickets for each date on the events calendar will also begin at www.arena.it.

Many associated initiatives launched in the last two years will return in an even richer and more structured form, including the Museums in Music chamber music show and the Arena Young season which will intertwine with the Opera, Ballet and Concert events. New initiatives will be announced soon, all aimed at making the Teatro Filarmonico a genuine hub and point of reference for all citizens of Verona and fans from all over Italy and the rest of the world.

The 2026 Season was presented in the foyer of the Teatro Filarmonico during a musical event open to season ticket holders and the general public. Cecilia Gasdia, General Manager of Fondazione Arena, and writer and critic Alberto Mattioli previewed the programmes and the casts of next season’s operas, shows and concerts together with Stefano Trespidi, Deputy Artistic Director of Fondazione Arena. City councillor Pietro Trincanato was also in attendance. During the afternoon, the most beautiful passages from the productions of the 2026 season were performed live with the voices of Eleonora Bellocci, Marco Ciaponi, Carmela Remigio, Carlo Lepore and Michele Patti accompanied by Cecilia Gasdia herself on piano.

The artistic programme of the Teatro Filarmonico is also possible thanks to the support of main sponsor BCC Veneta, represented by Luca Cenzato, Head of the Institutional Marketing Service for Territorial Development and Institutional Relations.