2026–2027 SYMPHONIC SEASON OF THE TEATRO LIRICO GIUSEPPE VERDI DI TRIESTE
20 September 2026 – 19 May 2027
Programme
CONCERT 1
Sunday 20 September 2026, 6:00 PM
Ezio Bosso “White Ocean”(Antarctic)
Maurice Ravel Piano Concerto in G major
Dmitri Shostakovich Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47
Conductor FRANCESCO LANZILLOTTA
Piano BENEDETTO LUPO
Orchestra of the Fondazione Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi di Trieste
In collaboration with the Società dei Concerti di Trieste as part of the Festival di Trieste – Il Faro della Musica
CONCERT 2
Thursday 24 September 2026, 8:00 PM
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Overture to “Die Zauberflöte”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K. 503
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, “Jupiter”
Conductor TON KOOPMAN
Piano FRANCESCO PIEMONTESI
Orchestra of the Fondazione Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi di Trieste
In collaboration with the Società dei Concerti di Trieste as part of the Festival di Trieste – Il Faro della Musica
Following its meticulous and swift structural restoration, the Teatro Verdi in Trieste reopens with the first symphony season in years to span almost the entire theatrical calendar, from September to May. It will feature eleven concerts and an engaging thread devoted to twentieth-century and contemporary music. As is customary, the first two concerts, on 20 and 24 September, will be presented in collaboration with the Società dei Concerti di Trieste as part of the Il Faro della Musica festival, and will see Francesco Lanzillotta and Ton Koopman return to the podium in Trieste.
Two major innovations therefore distinguish the Teatro Verdi di Trieste’s new symphonic season. In response to the public’s growing interest in the orchestral repertoire, the season has been extended until May, with concerts scheduled almost monthly. At the same time, many of the programmes will open with a short work by a contemporary or twentieth-century composer, presenting the music of our time through some of its most significant figures on the international scene. The new season will open with music by one of the world’s most beloved composers, whose memory also has deep roots in the city: Turin-born Ezio Bosso. The first concert, presented in collaboration with the Società dei Concerti di Trieste as part of the Festival di Trieste – Il Faro della Musica, will feature “White Ocean (Antarctic)”, a movement from his Symphony No. 1, Oceans. This monumental symphonic work is rarely performed in its entirety. All the more memorable, therefore, is the sold-out 2019 performance at the Cavea of Rome’s Auditorium Parco della Musica, when Bosso himself conducted the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
Francesco Lanzillotta, one of the most highly regarded conductors of his generation, will take the podium on 20 September, with Benedetto Lupo as the soloist in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major. Lupo is an outstanding interpreter of this mature work by the great French composer, who presented it at the Salle Pleyel in Paris in 1932, following the international success of Boléro. In the concerto, Ravel moved away from experimentation and looked once more to Mozart, in keeping with the rappel à l’ordre that would characterise European art in the 1930s. The programme concludes with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, presented in 1937 as “a Soviet artist’s creative response to just criticism” following Stalin’s and the regime press’s condemnation of the “bourgeois” experimentation of his earlier works. In this respect, it forms a natural continuation of Ravel’s concerto.
The second concert presented as part of the Il Faro della Musica festival will take place on 24 September, with an all-Mozart programme conducted by Dutch organist and harpsichordist Ton Koopman and featuring acclaimed Italian-Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi. The programme will open with the Overture to Die Zauberflöte, one of the last pieces Mozart composed for the celebrated Singspiel and a cornerstone of German opera. The overture encompasses the defining elements of this fantastical work, beginning with the symbolic recurrence of the number three. This is followed by Mozart’s third-to-last piano concerto, No. 25 in C major, K. 503. The work marks his departure from the model that had brought him such success in Vienna’s concert academies, with solo writing that moves beyond mere ornamentation and rich orchestration that is never simply subservient to the piano. The programme concludes with Mozart’s final symphony, composed during the difficult summer of 1788: a masterpiece of radiant majesty and a true apotheosis of sonata form.The subscription campaign ends on Sunday 20 September 2026.
Tickets for non-subscription concerts, together with single tickets for concerts included in the subscription series, are now on sale.