The opening of the Opera and Ballet Season 2023 will be dedicated to a title greatly cherished by the Teatro Grande in Brescia and the Brescian public, Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

Reprised on 28 May 1904 precisely in Brescia after the unexpected fiasco of the Milanese première with enormous international success, the masterpiece by the maestro from Lucca would be revived in its second edition, the ‘Brescian’ edition no less, a rare performance that decreed its worldwide success.

The performance will be a new production that will debut in July 2023 and will feature the renowned soprano Eleonora Buratto in the title role (after her debut in the role at the Metropolitan this year) and one of the world’s best-known Italian batons, Maestro Riccardo Frizza, conducting.

The direction will be entrusted to the young and talented Greek director Rodula Gaitanou, in a continuation of that ‘unending scarlet thread of women’ that distinguishes the three inaugural directions of the three-year period 2022-2024 in Brescia, and the second Italian debut of a director who has long been on playbills throughout Europe.

Rodula Gaitanou was nominated for ‘Director of the Year’ at the 2019 International Opera Awards. Her Hedeland Opera production of Lucia di Lammermoor was nominated as ‘Best Opera Production’ at the CPH Awards (Denmark 2019). The productions of Massenet’s Don Quichotte and Barber’s Vanessa that she directed for the Wexford Festival Opera were both nominated for the Irish Times Theatre Awards in the ‘Best Opera’ category (Ireland 2020 and 2017).