2025-2026 OPERA AND BALLET SEASON
AUFSTIEG UND FALL DER STADT MAHAGONNY
(Rise and fall of the city of Mahagonny)
by Kurt Weill
Opera in three acts, libretto by Bertolt Brecht – Music Publisher: Universal
Concertmaster and Conductor BEATRICE VENEZI
Director HENNING BROCKHAUS
Set designer MARGHERITA PALLI
Costume designer GIANCARLO COLIS
Light designer PASQUALE MARI
Choreography VALENTINA ESCOBAR
A co-production between the Fondazione Teatro Regio di Parma and the Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia
Characters and performers
Leokadja Begbick ALISA KOLOSOVA / NOZOMI KATO
Fatty, der “Prokurist” IVAN TURSIC / NICOLAS RESINELLI
Dreieinigkeitsmoses ZOLTAN NAGY / TIZIANO ROSATI
Jenny Hill MARIA BELEN RIVAROLA / SILVIA CALIÒ
Jim Mahoney CRISTIANO OLIVIERI / SANTIAGO MARTINEZ
Jack O’Brien / Tobby Higgins NICOLA PAMIO
Bill, known as Sparbüchsenbill MARCELLO ROSIELLO
Joe, known as Alaskawolfjoe ADRIANO GRAMIGNI
Narrator GIACOMO SEGULIA
Girls of Mahagonny TATIANA PREVIATI, ATEFEH KADKHOZADEH, VERONIKA FOIA, FEDERICA GIANSANTI, ELENA SERRA, STEFANIA SECULIN
Choir master: PAOLO LONGO
Orchestra, choir and technical staff of the Fondazione Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi di Trieste
For the first time in Trieste, a rare masterpiece by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht – one of the most seductive, and therefore most incisive and corrosive, critiques of capitalist society – Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny is presented in the acclaimed staging by Henning Brockhaus, with the remarkable Beatrice Venezi conducting and making her debut in this title. An aesthetic inspired by Edward Hopper, a richly layered score featuring genuine popular evergreens set like seductive melodic jewels within an often explosive framework, and a large international cast come together in an opera that, today more than ever – almost a hundred years after its composition – reveals a disturbingly contemporary relevance.
The musical and theatrical masterpiece born of the second collaboration between Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht arrives in Trieste for the first time. A defining partnership of Berlin’s Roaring Twenties, in its final, feverish season of creative freedom before the darkness of Nazism, is already foreshadowed in the very name of the city of Mahagonny, which in English alludes to the colour of the brown shirts. Through a hallucinatory, dystopian narrative that moves between cabaret and musical theatre, the opera traces the rise and fall of an imaginary society and city founded solely on the blatant worship of money. Devoid of any rule other than the crushing display of economic success and the unrestrained, indiscriminate pursuit of pleasure, this senseless logic ultimately leads to disaster and collapse by self-combustion. Director Henning Brockhaus comments: “Mahagonny is a metropolis of pleasure and entertainment, a paradise of whisky, unlimited food and lustful brothels. It is a place where money can buy everything, yet in the end it is worth nothing: it cannot buy happiness, let alone life. The protagonist Jim Mahoney, with the fervour of a Capital-inspired revolutionary, imposes the law of ‘you may do anything’.”. Reflecting further on his interpretation of a masterpiece that was not only censored by the Nazis but never truly entered the standard repertoire of German theatres even after the Second World War, Brockhaus adds: “In Mahagonny, the working class is entirely absent; for this production, however, a world of the poor and exploited has been created at the back of the stage. They exist like a shadow, yet their presence is deeply unsettling. Inspiration for the sets and costumes also comes from the American painter Hopper. America created a dream of happiness through capitalism, but wealth is founded on crime. In Mahagonny entrepreneurs are criminals, yet also judges of themselves. They found the city of pleasure that promises to fulfil all dreams: the utopia of the petty bourgeois.”. This directorial vision cuts even more deeply into the short circuit between the seductive surface of the work and the harshness of its message, fully in line with the perspective of Music Director Beatrice Venezi, who observes: “Music is an instrument of reality, and conducting Mahagonny today means rejecting the idea that notes lead to redemption. Brecht and Weill construct an opera that does not console, but observes; does not sublimate, but exposes. Mahagonny is a city founded on the promise of absolute freedom, which soon reveals itself as the freedom to consume, to be consumed, to exhaust oneself. In this sense, it is not a distant dystopia: it is a lucid mirror of our neoliberal present, of the society of spectacle, of the consumption of identity as an economic and symbolic value. Weill’s music is seductive and corrosive at the same time. It uses tonality not as a guarantee of meaning, but as an emptied language – familiar yet unstable – capable of attracting while betraying. This music promises stability while exposing its impossibility. This is not the crisis of the tonal system, but the crisis of its meaning.”. This interpretation also reconsiders Mahagonny in the light of its ironic and peculiar fate in the very country it refers to – the United States –without ever truly belonging to it. From the 1950s onwards, many of the opera’s most celebrated songs and duets entered the repertoire of great American crooners precisely because of their ‘pop’ construction, becoming much-loved standards of so-called consumer music, despite having been conceived to denounce the very logic of consumption itself. Thus, for example, Alabama Song (Whisky Bar) has been performed by artists ranging from David Bowie and The Doors to Dalida, Milva and Marilyn Manson.
For such a rare and significant occasion, Teatro Verdi presents a cast of the highest calibre, featuring the Russian mezzo-soprano Alisa Kolosova – an international star for two consecutive seasons at the Arena di Verona and a leading presence on the world’s most prestigious stages – alternating with another international diva of the stature of Nozomi Kato, fresh from performances in Chicago, in the role of Leokadja Begbick, founder of the city of Mahagonny. Two exceptionally talented young singers with already distinguished careers portray Jenny Hill, the uninhibited leader of the group of girls in search of love and money who fall into the trap of Mahagonny: the Argentine soprano Maria Belen Rivarola, also highly experienced in the Spanish zarzuela repertoire, and the Sicilian soprano Silvia Caliò, who has already appeared on the stage of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino under the baton of Ivan Ciampa. The role of the male protagonist Jim Mahoney is performed by the seasoned tenor Cristiano Olivieri, alternating with the young Santiago Martinez, from Argentina. The large cast continues with tenor Nicola Pamio in the double role of Jack O’Brien and Tobby Higgins, baritone Marcello Rosiello as Bill, and Adriano Gramigni as Joe. Finally, the role of the Narrator is taken by Giacomo Segulia, a familiar face and voice to Trieste audiences.
A Friday 30 January 2026 – 8.00 pm
S Saturday 31 January 2026 – 4.00 pm
D Sunday 1 February 2026 – 4:00 pm
B Friday 6 February 2026 – 8.00 pm
C Saturday 7 February 2026 – 6.00 pm
E Sunday 8 February 2026 – 4.00 pm