How one company is defying Italy’s opera curse

By E.B.

LATE last year, an Italian orchestra and chorus journeyed across the Atlantic, performing in Washington, New York, Toronto and Chicago. The performers didn’t come from one of Italy’s most iconic opera houses—Milan’s La Scala, for example, or Rome’s Accademia di Santa Cecilia. The players and their choir belonged to Turin’s Teatro Regio, which in the past decade has managed a remarkable feat: it has thrived as other companies have slumped.

“When I decided to take the position, I knew that the potential of the orchestra and the chorus was high, but their motivation was not,” says Gianandrea Noseda, who became music director of the Teatro Regio in 2007. He changed that by making recordings and DVDs and embarking upon international tours. In the opera business, giving under-motivated staff something interesting to do is not as easy as it sounds. Opera is an extraordinarily expensive art form, and the Teatro Regio was already making a loss.

What the Teatro Regio needed, Mr Noseda and the opera staff concluded, was sponsorship. In 2007 it had no sponsorship funding or philanthropic income, so he set about talking to businessmen in this industrial hub (Turin is known more for Fiat than for opera, even though “La Bohème”, a perennial box office hit, received its world premiere here 120 years ago). Many, he maintains, are interested in culture.

Convincing top opera managers that they need private money in addition to government funding has been harder. “In the beginning it was pretty tough to convey this idea in Italy,” Mr Noseda says. Intendants [opera companies’ general managers] have traditionally just been administrators, administering government money. Now they have to be managers.” Indeed, Italy’s famous opera houses are in the midst of a serious financial crisis, with only three major houses—La Scala, Teatro Regio and Venice’s La Fenice—currently solvent and the government unwilling to increase funding. This season, lack of money has already forced Genova’s Carlo Felice opera house to cancel its first production. Last year the Italian culture ministry spent €183m ($204m) on the country’s 14 major opera houses—a figure down from the €191m ($213m) provided by the government five years ago.

Though a music director rarely takes the lead on fundraising, Mr Noseda’s American-inspired strategy seems to be working. The Teatro Regio’s North American tour was sponsored by EATaly, a fast-growing Italian food emporium based in Alba, close to Turin. The opera’s new production of “La Bohème”, which premieres on October 12th, is primarily paid for by Italy’s largest bank Intesa Sanpaolo, the defence giant Leonardo (previously known as Finmeccanica) and the automotive fabric-maker Alcantara. Lavazza, the coffee company, is among the opera house’s other sponsors.

Indeed, only La Scala and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia can boast a higher percentage of sponsorship revenue than the Teatro Regio. While the Teatro Regio’s figure (15%) comes nowhere close to the sponsorship deals and philanthropic funding enjoyed by American opera houses, the additional income has allowed Mr Noseda to start planning more foreign tours. Next year they will perform at the Edinburgh International Festival for the first time. “I don’t want our musicians to strive to be the best in Piedmont, or even Italy,” he explains. “I want them to strive to be the best in the world.”

“Things are happening in Turin,” declared Anthony Tommasini, the much-feared classical music critic of the New York Times, after hearing the orchestra at New York’s Carnegie Hall in December. He praised the “stylish and glowing playing of the orchestra; the robust yet sensitive singing of the impressive chorus; the solid cast…and the insightful conducting of Mr Noseda”. For Mr Tommasini, it was “one of [New York’s] operatic highlights of recent years”. Clearly the Teatro Regio has benefitted artistically from Mr Noseda’s direction.

And the fact that the Teatro Regio is thriving raises the question: if it can reverse its fortunes despite its somewhat lesser status, what’s to stop other Italian opera houses from doing the same? If nothing else, their name power would attract plenty of sponsors.