World Premiere: 12 December 2026 - Ferrara, Teatro Comunale

directed by Manuel Renga

music publishing Universal Music Publishing Ricordi

music by Lucio Dalla

based on an original idea by Marcello Corvino 

musical direction and arrangements by Roberto Molinelli

dramaturgy and text by Emanuele Aldrovandi

featured soloist Pierdavide Carone

choreography by Michele Merola

dancers MM Contemporary Dance Company

Orchestra Città di Ferrara

Coro Teatro Comunale di Ferrara

choir director Teresa Auletta

video direction Fabio Massimo Iaquone

set design Matteo Paoletti

costume design Nuvia Valestri

lighting design Marco Cazzola

actors Gabriele Martini, Marinella Manicardi

production Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Ferrara, Fondazione I TEATRI di Reggio Emilia, Fondazione Ravenna Manifestazioni, Fondazione Teatri di Piacenza, Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Modena, Fondazione Teatro Regio di Parma, Azienda Teatro del Giglio – A.T.G., Teatro Comunale di Bologna Fondazione, Comune di Rimini - Teatro Galli

co-production MM Contemporary Dance Company

in collaboration with Fondazione Lucio Dalla e Pressing Line

Premiere: 12 December 2026, Teatro Comunale di Ferrara

On New Year's Eve, guests from very different walks of life arrive at a grand seaside hotel: a young couple on the run, a piano bar singer searching for a lost love, a musician weary of life, and a businessman exiled from himself. They are welcomed by a porter who seems to know the fate of each of them.

As the orchestra rehearses for the New Year's gala and the dancers bring the hotel to life like a living organism, their stories intertwine with both irony and melancholy. Gradually, the realism of the opening situation dissolves into a dreamlike world that appears to emanate from the very spirit of the porter, who is ultimately revealed to be a Keeper of Dreams, inhabiting a liminal space between reality and imagination.

At midnight, the lights go out, time stands still, and the songs of Lucio Dalla become the only possible language through which to tell stories of longing, regret, and hope. When dawn finally returns, no one knows whether a new year has truly begun or whether it is simply another turn of the same melody.

This new pop opera does not tell the story of Lucio Dalla's life. Instead, it draws deeply from the richness of his music, transforming the vast human landscape portrayed in his songs into a theatrical experience.

For us, Lucio Dalla becomes the Keeper of Dreams: the one who could perceive with extraordinary clarity humanity's fears, desires, aspirations, and disappointments, and transform them into songs that are immediate, deeply moving, and universally accessible.

The production unfolds as a dream journey, where each character embodies those hopes, fears, and longings. Their lives intertwine through Dalla's music, which becomes the language that binds together this suspended world between dream and reality.

To tell these profoundly human and universal stories, the production brings together a symphony orchestra, a choir, three actors, a singer, and a contemporary dance company. An unconventional ensemble for the world of opera, yet one that lives, breathes, and moves as a single organism.

In 2026, at a time when haste, speed, and superficiality increasingly define our society, taking the time to listen to a story has become an essential gesture - almost a revolutionary act. And revolution, after all, was something that only Lucio truly knew how to achieve.

Manuel Renga

Approaching the music of Lucio Dalla means entering far more than a catalogue of songs: it means entering an entire world. A world of theatre, poetry, storytelling, profound melancholy, and sudden bursts of visionary imagination.

For me, Lucio Dalla also holds a deeply personal significance. It was with him, in the 1980s, that I created my very first arrangements - an experience that profoundly shaped both my musical journey and my understanding of the relationship between song and orchestral writing.

In this project, my arrangements are driven by the desire to revisit that world from a different perspective while remaining faithful to its identity. The symphony orchestra, choir, and solo voice are not intended to dress these songs in grander orchestral clothing; rather, they are a way of entering into them, questioning them, amplifying their narrative power, and revealing new, often unexpected, sonic possibilities. The orchestra does not simply accompany the songs: it deepens their meaning, broadens their emotional scope, and brings to light colours and depths that often remain hidden.

The choir adds a collective voice, almost a musical conscience: at once a popular echo, a human landscape, and a shared memory. Pierdavide Carone's solo voice is woven into this musical fabric as a narrative presence, uniting word and music.

My aim has been to create a Lucio Dalla who is instantly recognisable, yet capable of surprising us.

Not a nostalgic celebration, but a journey of reinvention, allowing these songs, so deeply rooted in our collective memory, to open themselves once again to a new life.

Roberto Molinelli