The Donizetti Theater Foundation, with the City of Bergamo, announces the Prose Season and Altri Percorsi 2026|2027, the backbone of the Theater Season, whose full playbill also includes Operetta, Opera&Concerts and other events: a rich and articulated program that will run at the Donizetti Theater and Teatro Sociale over six months, from December 2026 to May 2027. There are seven titles in the Prose Season, for eight performances per show, and as many in Other Paths.

Sergio Gandi, Deputy Mayor and Councillor for Culture, brings greetings from the Municipal Administration of Bergamo: “The Season of Prose and Other Paths has always been one of the cornerstones of our city’s cultural offerings. This is thanks to artistic choices of absolute quality, reflecting the complexity of national theater production and beyond. Bergamo is itself a city that explores different areas of expression – from music to cinema, from visual arts to dance to spoken word theater precisely – marrying an awareness of tradition with current events. The proposals of the upcoming Season also go in this direction and are confirmed as a vehicle for a dialogue between past, present and future.”
George Berta, President of the Donizetti Theater Foundation, stresses the importance of the Prose Season and Other Paths also with a view to the involvement of young people, and takes the opportunity to thank those who work for the success of all the activities of the same Foundation: “In reiterating the centrality among our proposals of the Prose Season and Other Paths, it is also relevant to emphasize our role in bringing young people closer to the theater and culture more generally. In this perspective, the work of the Artistic Direction, which aims to involve the world of youth with special initiatives, as well as to offer high quality performances to the public, fits fully into this perspective. Also for this aspect, thanks are due to all those, both public and private partners, who support us in order to make our activities more and more incisive.”
Massimo Boffelli, General Director of the Donizetti Theatre Foundation, takes his cue from the success of the 2025|2026 Season: “In presenting the upcoming Prose and Other Paths Season, we cannot but start from the data of the season that has just ended: 51,706 total admissions for Prose – 5,763 subscriptions – and over 7,000 for Other Paths. These are significant, important numbers that confirm the success of audiences and once again attest to our driving force involving spectators of various age groups. We do not want to err on the side of presumption, but these are figures that few other theaters nationwide can count today, even in cities with a numerically larger population than Bergamo. The Season of Prose and Other Paths therefore plays a prominent role in our programming, as well as in the hearts of the people of Bergamo, showing its identity in a composite framework that includes two festivals of international scope, Donizetti Opera and Bergamo Jazz, the review Lezioni di Storia, one of our most qualifying vehicles of attention to young people, and other initiatives, such as for example the concert series Il Centro della Musica, which are gradually being consolidated.”
Maria Grazia Panigada, Artistic Director of the Prose Season and Other Pathways, introduces the program she designed for 2026|2027 this way: “We have just let go of one season and are about to welcome another: it is great excitement to know that so many people will see the shows I have chosen, with the hope that they will find in them excitement, entertainment, but also those questions that we need and that theater still knows how to ask us. Questions of a difficult time, in which it is right to continue to think about peace and the environment, keeping our feet firmly in the deeply human: looking inside can serve precisely to understand even the difficult time in which we live.” “From the Elizabethan theater of Shakespeare to the contemporary writing and linguistic variety of Other Paths, each evening we will find ourselves in another time and place in which to immerse ourselves. And we will do it together because, in thehic et nunc of its making, theater requires the presence of the spectator, a ritual that is repeated each time in the shared act. This is why theater plays a central role in a community: a valuable exercise in seeking beyond. And also next season we will continue in the encounter with the younger generations thanks to the work of the Educational Services, because education is one of the founding cornerstones of the mission of the Donizetti Theatre Foundation,” Maria Grazia Panigada continues.

The Season of Prose and Other Paths 2026|2027, is realized with the contribution of MIC – Italian Ministry of Culture, Lombardy Region, Bergamo Chamber of Commerce, Allianz (Main Partner of the Donizetti Theater Foundation), Intesa Sanpaolo, SIAD and an important number of companies adhering to the Donizetti Ambassadors project that support the Foundation through Art Bonus.
Giacomo Campora, CEO of Allianz S.p.A., emphasizes, “The long-standing and successful partnership with the Donizetti Theater Foundation of Bergamo, renewed last year until 2030, represents for Allianz a contribution to cultural growth, inclusion and enhancement of local communities.”
Daniele Pastore, Regional Director Lombardy North Banca dei Territori of Intesa Sanpaolo, says, “With the renewal of our support to the Donizetti Theater Foundation, Intesa Sanpaolo confirms its commitment to the territories in which it operates. Investing in quality initiatives such as this Season means contributing concretely to the vitality of the production fabric and the enhancement of the cultural capital of the territory.”

Prose Season at the Donizetti Theater

Great actors, great directors, classic and modern texts: with its seven titles on the bill, for eight performances each (Saturday through Sunday of the following week; Monday rest), the Prose Season 2026|2027 at the Donizetti Theater promises, as usual, to be marked by spectacularity and depth of content, in an established variety of genres and poetics.
The beginning, from December 12 to 20, 2026, is entrusted to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead., a tragicomedy with at its center two secondary characters fromHamlet, childhood friends of the prince of Denmark, hired by King Claudius: Tom Stoppard’s most famous text is staged with the flavor of the Commedia dell’Arte and stars Francesco Pannofino and Francesco Acquaroli as the two friends, joined by Paolo Sassanelli and other actors.
In the new year, from January 16 to 24, the Donizetti will welcome one of the masters of Italian theater, Umberto Orsini, after his 2024 success with I ragazzi irresistibili. The great actor will tell his story in Before the Storm, a diary of a life dedicated to the art of acting, evoked through a typical evening before going on stage, thanks to images and videos that bring to light a personal past that, in the end, also belongs to everyone, because it crosses and tells the story of our country. The authoritative direction is by Massimo Popolizio.
From Feb. 6 to 14 it will continue with The Little Queen of Leenane by Irish-born British playwright Martin McDonagh. On stage, directed by Raphael Tobia Vogel, Ivana Monti and Ambra Angiolini are engaged in giving voice to a text that analyzes the closed relationship of a mother and daughter in the maelstrom of misunderstanding.
Also in February, from Feb. 20 to 28, one of the most famous American comedies will be performed, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?. In the roles that were played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in the movies will be Cesare Bocci and Vittoria Belvedere .
Still an American text, but of a very different cut and setting, it will be performed March 6-14: Suddenly Last Summer, a psychological thriller signed by Tennessee Williams where the theme of power creeps into family affections. This play, set in deep 1920s America, was also brought to the big screen, again starring Katharine Herbpurn and a young Liz Taylor. Their roles will be played by Laura Marinoni and Leda Kreider (already starring in Ecloga XI, a co-production of Teatro Donizetti with Anagoor), while the part of John Cukrowicz, which was Montgomery Clift’s, will be played by Edoardo Ribatto.
Elisabetta Pozzi, Gigio Alberti and Giuseppe Sartori will be the outstanding performers, from April 10 to 18, of The Other Side, a powerful theatrical allegory about the border that exposes the absurdity of fear of the other and the walls that divide us, signed by Daniel Dorfman, an Argentine playwright who was Salvador Allende’s cultural adviser.
Finally, from May 8 to 16, Hamlet by William Shakespeare, offered in director Leonardo Lidi ‘s refined version, which, through an avowed fiction, pushes the audience to delve into the depths of the text.

 

Other Pathways

Altri Percorsi has always been an open window on research, on the multiple modes of expression coming from the very rich and multifaceted landscape that is contemporary theater. All performances, with one exception, are scheduled at the Social Theater.
The 2027 edition of the festival begins Jan. 14 with The Lost Shadow of Peter Schlemihl, a monologue by Marco Baliani who returns, after 20 years, to the magnificent text that is The Wonderful Story of Peter Schlemihl, a novel published by German writer Adalbert Von Chamisso in 1841, much loved by the actor and director himself.
Inspired by the surreal universe of Buster Keaton, on the other hand, is Lebensraum (“living space”), scheduled at the Donizetti Theater on Feb. 4: a jewel of physical theater signed by Dutch director Jakop Ahlbom, a slapstick comedy where music sets the pace with the live presence of the Alamo Race Track, a band that blends a silent movie atmosphere with the energy of rock.
It will continue, again at the Sociale, on February 17 and 18, with Sotterraneo, a company now well known to Bergamo audiences: with Fire was the cure the Florentine group is inspired by Ray Bradbury’s famous novel Fahrenheit 451, written 50 years ago and set in the present day.
On Thursday, March 4, Maria Cassi will bring her irresistible comedy back to town with Recital. Our first 40 years of musical comedy theater. , in which the Tuscan actress will have Leonardo Brizzi by her side, retracing the vicissitudes of their legendary duo Herring and Verdurini, which has literally crisscrossed the world since the second half of the 1980s.
Altri Percorsi will then take a plunge into the past, back to 458 B.C., the year when in Athens Aeschylus wrote Eumenides, the third part of the Oresteia trilogy. The play, scheduled for April 22 and the morning of the next day, will involve the same group as Euripides’ Supplices , seen and applauded in 2023: the actresses of the ATIR company – Francesca Ciocchetti, Matilde Facheris, Maria Pilar Pérez Aspa, Arianna Scommegna, Giorgia Senesi, Sandra Zoccolan and Debora Zuin – and director Serena Sinigaglia.
April 29 and 30 will then return to the contemporary with The angel of the hearth by Emma Dante, with David Leone, Giuditta Perriera, Ivano Picciallo and Leonarda Saffi on stage. In the play by the Sicilian playwright and director, the rituality of domestic violence is staged, weaving even veins of comedy into the drama, and then wrapping it all in Emma Dante’s own mantle of poetry.
Closing Other Paths, on Thursday, May 6, matinee and evening, the Campo Teatrale company will stage Green Days, whose environmental themes are related to other shows hosted by the festival in recent times, such as The Trials and Ilva Football Club. In the case of Green Days we will enter the everyday life of an apartment in which a father and daughter, with difficulty, live together: a cross-section of our times between activism and compromises to be faced, in a confrontation between Generation Millennials and Generation Z.

 

Meetings around the shows

Unfailing moments of in-depth discussion and dialogue between spectators and protagonists on stage, on the occasion of some of the shows of the Prose Season and Other Paths 2026|2027 there will be meetings open to the public and students in which actors and directors will be asked to tell their stories and answer questions about their respective works. All meetings will be coordinated by Maria Grazia Panigada.
These are the shows of the Prose Season at the center of the meetings, scheduled at 6 p.m. at the Music Room “M. Tremaglia” of the Donizetti Theater: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, (Thursday, Dec. 17), Before the Storm (Thursday, Jan. 21), The Other Side (Thursday, April 15).
Peter Schlemihl’s The Lost Shadow, Fire Was the Cure and Eumenides are instead the titles of Other Paths that will be followed by the meetings at each performance.