Teatro Verdi di Trieste and Go! 2025 — Nova Gorica – Gorizia European Capital of Culture
present
27 September — GORIZIA — “Amedeo Duca d’Aosta” Airport Hangar — 5.30 p.m. — WORLD PREMIERE Admission free, subject to reservation
28 September — TRIESTE — Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi — 6 p.m.
FEDELI D’AMORE
by Giorgio Battistelli
LYRIC SCENES for soloists, choir and orchestra
New commission from the Fondazione Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi di Trieste – 2025
inspired by Carlo Michelstaedter and Claudio Magris
Libretto by Arnaldo Colasanti
Publisher: Casa Ricordi, Milan
Conductor ENRICO CALESSO
Mise en espace by Anagoor
Director: Simone Derai
Direction assistance and project supervision by Luca Altavilla and Marco Menegoni
Carlo – Bryan Lopez Gonzales, tenor
Enrico – Federico Longhi, baritone
Chorus master: PAOLO LONGO
ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS OF THE FONDAZIONE TEATRO LIRICO GIUSEPPE VERDI, TRIESTE
On the occasion of GO! 2025 Nova Gorica – Gorizia European Capital of Culture, the Teatro Verdi di Trieste, in collaboration with Regione FVG, presents “Fedeli d’Amore” – the new commission from the Fondazione Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi di Trieste to composer Giorgio Battistelli. The work features a libretto freely inspired by Claudio Magris’s early novel “Un altro mare” (“A different sea”) on the Gorizian philosopher Claudio Michelstaedter, a leading figure of 20th-century European thought.
The world premiere will be presented in two forms: staged on 27 September in the unusual setting of the “Amedeo Duca d’Aosta” Airport Hangar in Gorizia, as part of the Go! 2025 programme, and in concert form at the Teatro Verdi on 28 September.
The Teatro Verdi in Trieste once again takes on the role of driving force behind a new literary and musical creation dedicated to the region and its European significance, through the commission of the libretto and music for Fedeli d’Amore as part of GO! 2025 Nova Gorica – Gorizia European Capital of Culture. Conceived in collaboration with Regione FVG, the project enriches the international operatic repertoire with a work focused on the intellectual and cultural excellence of the area.
Fedeli d’Amore originates from the tale of travel and friendship in Claudio Magris’s 1991 early novel A different Sea, centred on the unusual and dramatic life of Enrico Mreule, from Gorizia, and his friendship with fellow citizen Carlo Michelstaedter — a towering figure of twentieth-century philosophy despite his premature death at the age of 23 by suicide, with the revolver given to him by Mreule himself. The libretto, by writer and essayist Arnaldo Colasanti, interweaves passages from other works by Magris with this powerful starting point, carved into the very flesh of early twentieth-century European thought, in which Michelstaedter stands as a foundational figure despite the small number of works he produced and his geographical distance from the great cultural capitals.
The work was conceived after receiving Magris’s approval in its earliest stages. Claudio Magris embodies the culture of Trieste and Friuli Venezia Giulia worldwide. Giorgio Battistelli — chosen by Teatro Verdi as the most frequently performed and internationally acclaimed Italian composer — embraced the commission with great enthusiasm, dedicating the score to Magris himself. He explains: “Fedeli d’Amore is the story of a long friendship: it is loyalty surviving pain, life added to life. The theme of this opera of ‘lyric scenes’ revolves around a real event. Carlo Michelstaedter was born and died in Gorizia, spending his university years in Florence, where he graduated with a thesis entitled La Persuasione e la Rettorica, dedicated to ancient Greek philosophy. On 17 October 1910, just after graduating, he shot himself with the pistol given to him by his closest friend Enrico Mreule, who had left a year earlier for Argentina. Yet Fedeli d’Amore is about much more. There are three characters on stage: the two friends — Carlo (tenor) and Enrico (baritone) — and then the World (chorus). Enrico has a brave soul; he speaks across the ocean: his solitude in the pampas is that of one who has forgotten nothing and who continues to hold within his grasp a visionary dialogue, brimming with promises kept. Carlo, by contrast, is the listener: fragile, elusive, secret, the hermit shut away in his room. His voice is absolute and irrevocable, yet it carries the burning patience of one who savours to the last drop the fleeting and priceless gift of life. And then there is the World — the horror of judgement and contempt: the triumphant rhetoric that seeks to persuade us that nothing has value and that all will be destroyed, ashes upon ashes, above all the humanity of our desires.
Yet, the dialogue continues: music will always be stronger than death. Absurd as it may seem, that gunshot is a talisman of love that transcends all borders and barriers. Fidelity has the voice of youth, and youth holds the true words of dreams. There is no use in seeking to overcome the world by pursuing the very laws that rule it. For Carlo and Enrico, the happiness of a life uncommon but forever shared is enough — indeed, it overflows.”
Fedeli d’Amore will be conducted by Enrico Calesso, Music Director of the Teatro Verdi and an esteemed musician with a degree in philosophy, whose personal passion for Michelstaedter’s thought is such that the entire season of the theatre will conclude in a symbolic circular form, in dialogue with Battistelli’s oratorio, with Richard Strauss’s Elektra. Albeit probably unknown to the philosopher — it was composed in 1909, just one year before his death — the work is nonetheless central to Michelstaedter’s thought, to the point that he cited it in the epigraph of his celebrated thesis La Persuasione e la Rettorica, with the words from Sophocles’ tragedy: “I know that my behaviour is unseemly, and becomes me ill”, used to underline the “inappropriateness” of a thesis that was never truly such, yet which in itself proclaims the centrality of its title within the multicultural Habsburg milieu in which Michelstaedter was steeped.
The mise en espace and stage direction are by the Veneto-based collective Anagoor, led by its founder Simone Derai as director. An open company and ongoing laboratory of artistic and linguistic fusion, Anagoor’s theatre — steeped in literature and philosophy — is thus the perfect interpreter of Fedeli d’Amore in the unconventional setting of the “Amedeo Duca d’Aosta” Airport Hangar in Gorizia. Here the audience will be drawn into the stage action, and the chosen time of performance will lead into sunset, serving as a natural backdrop for a production in close dialogue with the hic et nunc of its setting: the Friulian land, its border identity, and its enduring vocation as a bridge between languages and cultures.
The role of Carlo Michelstaedter will be sung by the young Cuban tenor Bryan Lopez Gonzales, a singer enjoying a brilliant international career and already well known across neighbouring border regions such as Slovenia and Croatia; the role of Enrico Mreule will be sung by the solid baritone Federico Longhi, already admired at the Verdi for his Giorgio Germont in last season’s La traviata.
The Vice President and Regional Councillor for Culture and Sport, Mario Anzil, remarks: “With Fedeli d’Amore we celebrate a cultural project of remarkable depth and resonance. It draws on our history and on the legacy of major figures such as Carlo Michelstaedter, reaffirming Friuli Venezia Giulia’s role as a European crossroads of culture. This work brings together music, literature and philosophy, giving voice to a borderland that has always known how to speak the many languages of the soul — and to some of its most gifted sons. The Region is proud to support this production as part of GO! 2025, which strengthens our commitment to promoting the identity and cultural excellence of our land within an international dimension — the clearest expression of our vision of a frontier culture.”
The event on 27 September will be free to attend upon reservation, with only 400 places available; seating will be informal and on the floor. The Trieste performance will be accessible through the theatre’s box office and is part of the symphonic season.
To book tickets for Gorizia on 27 September, please visit the Box Office of the Teatro G. Verdi di Trieste or send a request by email to [email protected] by Friday 26 September 2025.