Artistic Personnel

Musicians with different backgrounds, cultures and styles have all taken turns.on the podium of the world's most atmospheric open-air theatre, Among them were three conductor-composers: Pietro Mascagni who conducted Il Piccolo Marat in 1921; Riccardo Zandonai who conducted Giulietta e Romeo in 1939, and Mikis Theodorakis who conducted Zorba the Greek in 1988.

Other conductors who have led the Arena Orchestra include Sergio Failoni, Antonino Votto, Gino Marinuzzi, Vittorio Gui, Franco Capuana, Francesco Molinari Pradelli, Rudolf Kempe, Argeo Quadri, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, Lovro von Matacic, Elihau Inbal, Nello Santi, Peter Maag, Giuseppe Patanè, Michel Plasson, Anton Guadagno, Yuri Ahronovitch, Donato Renzetti, Andrea Battistoni, Gustav Kuhn, Daniel Oren, Riccardo Muti, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, and Georges Prêtre.

Since 1975, with the opening of the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, the Arena’s Orchestra has also proven itself in an indoor theatre with a repertoire ranging from baroque to romantic and contemporary music. The activities of the artistic ensembles in the region are also intense.

In 2018 the Arena di Verona Orchestra returned to Oman for the Opera Season of the Royal Opera House Muscat with La Sonnambula with direction, sets and costumes by Hugo de Ana in January. In September it was called to the Gala Plácido Domingo - Antología de la Zarzuela, a successful event of the 2017 Opera Festival, featuring the most exciting arias from the Spanish folk tradition.

In September 2018, it also starred in the charity marathon La notte di Andrea Bocelli, a show hosted at the Arena di Verona and broadcast on RAI 1, RAI PLAY and RADIO 2.

In May 2019, the Orchestra was a guest in Munich, making a successful return with the concert Amore & Amicizia in the Herkulessaal of the Bavarian Residenz.

2020, marked by the pandemic, saw the Orchestra resume its activities with the Summer Festival at the Arena di Verona in the unprecedented central stage set-up as the protagonist of eleven concerts to bring new repertoires to the Amphitheatre: Venetian Baroque, Mozart, Rossini, Wagner. Three more concerts in the main squares of Verona were followed by a winter season streamed from the Teatro Filarmonico, up to the 2021 Arena Festival, inaugurated with a performance of Aida in concert form under the baton of Riccardo Muti.

In January 2022, it returned to open the season of the Royal Opera House Muscat for its 10th anniversary, with a new production of Rigoletto according to Zeffirelli, also broadcast by Rai Cultura.

The Chorus of the Fondazione Arena di Verona was born with the start of opera performances in the amphitheatre on 10 August 1913. Its first directors were Ferruccio Cusinati and Vittore Veneziani. They were followed by Giulio Bertola, Corrado Mirandola, Tullio Boni, Aldo Danieli, Armando Tasso, Romano Gandolfi, Marco Faelli, Giovanni Andreoli, Salvo Sgrò and Vito Lombardi. Andrea Cristofolini has been other chorus master since 1995.

Since May 2023, the Chorus has been trained by Roberto Gabbiani. All the glorious moments in the Veronese amphitheatre invariably coincide with performances of operas with a broad choral scope and impressive use of massed voices. It is no coincidence that the Arena’s melodramas par excellence are those of greater use of chorus, such as Aida, La Gioconda, and Nabucco. The latter's “Va' pensiero” continues to elicit rousing ovations from the audience, which never tires of asking for an encore.