Caterina Cornaro Experience

The Caterina Cornaro Experience is an immersive project inspired by Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Caterina Cornaro, which opens the 2025 edition of the Donizetti Opera Festival and returns to the stage of the theatre that bears the composer’s name after thirty years.

Promoted by Fondazione Teatro Donizetti within the Donizetti Opera Festival, the project connects Bergamo’s most prominent cultural institutions to offer audiences a city-wide journey through art, history, and imagination — discovering both sixteenth-century Venice, where the Queen of Cyprus’s fate was sealed, and the lasting resonance of her myth across the nineteenth century and into the present day.

The exhibition was conceived to showcase the materials preserved in the iconographic archive of the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti, revealing how the figure of Caterina Cornaro has fascinated generations of artists and inspired powerful imagery in the operatic and visual worlds alike.

A special section, curated by the Fondazione Arte della Seta Lisio in Florence, features a meticulous reconstruction of Caterina Cornaro’s stage costumes from the opera’s 1844 Neapolitan premiere, as well as the sumptuous gown worn by the Queen of Cyprus in Francesco Hayez’s celebrated portrait, preserved at the Accademia Carrara.

This marks a truly unprecedented occasion: for the first time ever, the costumes from a Donizetti world premiere have been faithfully recreated. The exhibition also presents the stage costume worn by soprano Denia Mazzola in the 1995 Bergamo revival directed by Gianandrea Gavazzeni.

Thirty years later, Caterina Cornaro returns to Bergamo — still majestic, still captivating — just as befits a queen to remember.

Project curated by: Tania Cefis, Clelia Epis, Luca Loglio, Alessio Francesco Palmieri Marinoni

Promoted by: Fondazione Teatro Donizetti – Donizetti Opera

In collaboration with: Accademia Carrara, Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai, Fondazione Arte della Seta Lisio, Museo delle Storie di Bergamo

With special thanks to: Elena Baistrocchi, Giulia Barcella, Giada Borlotti, Fabrizio Capitanio, Oriana Castagnozzi, Lucia Cecio, Mario Digiglio, Paolo Fabbri, Roberta Frigeni, Cristiana Iommi, Paola Marabelli, Giovanni Mario Nizzola, Francesco Ortona, Felice Pessi, Andrea Rossato, Gianfranco Rota, Nicoletta Tognoni

Photo credits: Fondazione Accademia Carrara – Bergamo; Fondazione Adelaide e Maria Antonietta Pagliara – Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa di Napoli; Ministero della Cultura – Le Gallerie degli Uffizi; Photo Studio U.V.

Graphic design: NT Next

Exhibition set-up: Con.All. di Conte Giuseppe S.R.L.

Video production: Giancarlo De Angeli

Technical partners: Casa d’Arte Fiore Srl; La Nazionale Manifatture S.r.l. (Bollate); Manifattura Marina S.a.s. (Busto Arsizio); Opera Rara; Silvana Monti Fashion School (Busto Arsizio)