About
While the engines are revving for the 2026 Festival, next year’s program is already here! Discover the first previews of the 104th Arena di Verona Opera Festival 2027 billboard.
The highlight of the season will be the return of ballet to the Arena after 34 years with Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. This new production by Fondazione Arena di Verona brings the performance to the very city where Shakespeare set the world's most famous love story. Full-length ballet performances have been missing from the Amphitheatre since 1993.
The Operas
Five opera productions featuring the return of recent hits in the sign of Verdi: La Traviata directed by Paul Curran, Nabucco directed by Stefano Poda, and Carmen in the sumptuous production by Franco Zeffirelli. Aida will return in a double version: the historical production by Gianfranco de Bosio, inspired by the 1913 premiere, and the "crystal" edition created for the centenary Festival by Stefano Poda.
Galas and Special Events
The Roberto Bolle and Friends gala, featuring the best of world dance in co-production with ARTEDANZA srl, will exceptionally have two dates.
The immersive concerts co-produced with Balich Wonder Studio also return: Viva Vivaldi, featuring the famous Four Seasons, and the brand-new Paganini Paradise debuting in 2026. These will be joined by Orff’s Carmina Burana, featuring a large orchestra, chorus, and children's choir. Opera star Jonas Kaufmann will also renew his bond with the Arena in a gala entirely dedicated to him.
About the Arena di Verona Opera Festival
Arena di Verona is a Roman amphitheater, one of the most remarkable archaeological monuments in Europe. It was built in the I century. our era, in the last years of the reign of Emperor Augustus. Today "arena di Verona" is known all over the world thanks to the annual summer Opera festival taking place within its walls. The festival was opened on 10 August 1913 with a production of Giuseppe Verdi's Opera Aida. On the stage of the arena di Verona performed outstanding artists such as Renata Tebaldi, Maria Callas, Mario Del Monaco, Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras, Luciano Pavarotti, Tullio Serafin, Riccardo Muti.
The Opera season annually attracts more than half a million spectators from all over the world. The repertoire of the festival is mainly mass, large-scale works ("Nabucco", "Troubadour", "Aida", "Carmen", "Turandot").
Although the Arena di Verona has always maintained its vocation as a performance venue throughout its millenary history: from the naumachie or staged naval battles of ancient Rome to the jousts of the Middle Ages, and on to Rossini in the early 1800s, it was not until 1913 that it became the true home of great open-air opera performances, with an Aida that epitomised the Art Nouveau trend of the time, reconstructed from original sketches and still beloved of audiences today.
Always true to its traditional role as democratic propagator of musical culture in Europe, as well as popular, accessible and universal home to musical theatre, loved by opera stars, crowned heads, Hollywood actors and audiences from all over the world, the Arena di Verona has always been one of the most influential locations for inclusiveness in art.
