Michele Mariotti has been appointed Musical Director of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. The assignment, lasting four years, will be assumed by the conductor starting from 1 November 2022 and will involve the direction of at least three opera titles for each season.

«We have all changed. This strange and dramatic period that the pandemic has brought on us has deeply changed both our individual habits and our shared community. I welcome the chance to be Musical Director of the Opera di Roma with great joy, but mainly with a great sense of responsibility: I would like the theatre to always be a mirror image of our society.

We have become used to experimenting, to making music under the strangest conditions, to listening in a different way: I would like this new opening to reflect on our curiosity, to turn into a desire to seek and a will to find new paths.

That’s why I would like to propose repertories that communicate this vision and collaborate with directors who can give it theatrical life.

Daily news tell us of all sorts of violence, especially perpetuated towards the weaker ones. Fanatics kill those that don’t comply with an arranged marriage or an imposed religion, even in our own country. Musical theatre has been describing this for a long time. I therefore would like to ponder about our present through titles like Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, where fanaticism isn’t religious but political. Or through stories of oppression like in Puccini’s Suor Angelica, Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle, or Dallapiccola’s Il Prigioniero.

Without forgetting that we can and should ponder also through joy and irony, as Ravel’s L’Heure espagnole and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi suggest.

I would like to open up to the international repertoire, because our theatres are called to an important cultural mission, one that we cannot avoid by simply falling back on what is well known and tested, or that which guarantees immediate success.

We as artists are called to a mission of public service. I can’t wait to start working on it in this prestigious theatre and in this marvelous city.

I thank the President of the Foundation and Mayor of Rome Virginia Raggi and the Superintendent Carlo Fuortes for their confidence». Maestro Michele Mariotti declared.