Olympia | Comunale Nouveau

From 15 to 19 May 2026 at the Comunale Nouveau in Bologna, the performance Olympia by Nicola Campogrande is staged.

A Copernican revolution overturns the point of view and turns the doll Olympia from an object into a subject. Inspired by the famous Der Sandmann (The Sandman) by E.T.A. Hoffmann, the first of the tales in Jacques Offenbach’s Contes d’Hoffmann shows the poet deceived by a pair of glasses that distort reality and make him believe in the human nature of the beautiful mechanical doll created by the scientist Spalanzani.

Today, instead, Campogrande’s opera with a libretto by Pietro Bodrato takes the side of an artificial creature that reflects on itself, its own nature, and its own consciousness. The creator as well—the man who elevates himself to a deity by forging artificial life—is also the subject of reflection, reduced by his own work from central figure to observing satellite, confronted with the consequences of his own audacity.

The woman-as-object imagined by Hoffmann in literature and opera, drawn from the myth of the artificial human and from the image of perfect female submission, emancipates herself to the point of joining the ranks of Asimov’s sentient robots and all their science-fiction relatives. It also increasingly speaks to today’s doubts and fears in the face of the evolution of artificial intelligence. And even if certain apocalyptic scenarios are naive and unrealistic, the reflection on free will and on the relationship between nature and culture, between natural and artificial, makes art the key to expressing and understanding, above all, our humanity.