Napoli milionaria | Comunale Nouveau

From Friday, June 12 to Wednesday, June 17, 2026, at the Comunale Nouveau in Bologna, the opera Napoli milionaria by Nino Rota will be staged.

A fake funeral wake staged to deceive the law. It could be a scene from *Gianni Schicchi*: there is laughter, quite a lot of it. Then, suddenly, the bombs—everything changes, and a minor character, one of those figures we had barely noticed adding color to a scene, returns to the spotlight announcing that his wife has died under the rubble. The false and the real. Thus ends the first act of *Napoli milionaria*: comic opera and tragedy, the art of making do turned into playful farce, and history breaking in violently and mercilessly.

An entire world is contained in this second collaboration (1977) between Eduardo De Filippo and Nino Rota (the first was the fairy tale *Uno scoiattolo in gamba*, from 1959), which would also become the composer’s final opera.

The Jovine family and the microcosm of a Naples tenement struggle for survival between the final embers of Fascism, World War II, and the euphoria and contradictions of the postwar period. Rota’s music fits like a glove to the many shades of this bitter comedy, effortlessly mastering different languages, registers, and moods. De Filippo rewrites his own text, fully acting as librettist, and *Napoli milionaria!* stands as a true masterpiece of 20th-century melodrama—an opera written with the wisdom of the great masters, with a depth of thought and language fully at the service of theatre, telling a harsh, hopeless story, yet one also layered with smiles, irony, and tenderness.

Opera in three acts

Librettist: Eduardo De Filippo
Based on the play of the same name

Conductor: James Feddeck

Stage director: Marcelo Lombardero

New production by Teatro Comunale di Bologna

Orchestra, Chorus and Technical Staff of Teatro Comunale di Bologna

Chorus master: Gea Garatti Ansini

Characters and cast: read more on the official website