Operetta Season 2026

At the White Horse
with the Elena D’Angelo Operette Company

Sunday, April 26 at the Donizetti Theater

The Operette Season 2026 of the Donizetti Theater Foundation is drawing to a close: in fact, the third and last of the titles on the bill is scheduled for Sunday, April 26 (3:30 p.m.) at the city’s main theater, Al Cavallino Bianco, among the most famous operettas ever. Bringing it to the stage will be the Compagnia d’Operette Elena D’Angelo, directed and choreographed by Serge Manguette.

An operetta in three acts written in 1896 by Ralph Benatzky and Robert Stolz, with a libretto by Hans Muller, Erik Charell and Robert Gilbert, Al Cavallino Bianco is set in the pleasant village of St. Wolfango, in the Salzkammergut, where the beautiful hostess who owns the hotel of the same name gathers, as she does every summer, her guests. Misunderstandings, work and love disruptions will characterize the hotel’s summer season until the arrival of the Archduke during hunting season brings calm and serenity back.

The first performance took place in Berlin on November 8, 1930. A year later, at the Teatro Lirico in Milan, the curtain was raised, for the first time in Italy, on what was called the “show of the year.” The sumptuous staging proposed by the Schwartz brothers, the music full of grace, brio and agreeableness, and the undeniable sunny mountain setting decreed the success of the show, and the audience, shouting “Bravi! Bravi!”, seemed never to want to leave the hall and return home to the foggy Milanese night. But we are now in the 1930s, and Al Cavallino Bianco represents the watershed between operetta proper and musical comedy, and can be considered one of the last fireworks of “little opera,” one of the most enthusiastic of the century.

De Al Cavallino Bianco are worth mentioning the two important RAI editions: the first in 1954 with Nuto Navarrini, Edda Vincenzi, Anna Campori and Elvio Calderoni, directed by Mario Landi; and the one in 1974 with the likes of Gianrico Tedeschi, Paolo Poli, Angela Luce, Mita Medici, Maurizio Micheli, Gianni Nazzaro and Tony Renis, directed by Vito Molinari and choreographed by Gino Landi.

Compagnia d’Operette Elena D’Angelo’s edition takes into account both the characteristics of operetta and television versions, winking at musical comedy and musicals, resulting in a choral show full of color, vivacity and lightness.