Roberto De Simone, Italian stage director, playwright, composer and musicologist has died at 91
Born, 25 August 1933 in Naples, Italy – Died, 6 April 2025 in Naples, Italy (aged 91)
Roberto De Simone, Italian stage director, playwright, composer and ethnomusicologist, died today in his hometown Naples at the age of 91.
Most of his work was in Italy, but his La Gatta Cenerentola has been continually revived and seen in the US and the UK. De Simone’s three-act musical by is in the Neapolitan language, with evocations of Italy’s popular culture by reinventing folksongs and antique musical styles.
The musical opened in 1976 at the Spoleto Festival, Italy’s Festival of Two Worlds. It received its American premiere in 1985 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in New York City, and its British premiere at the King’s Theatre during the 1988 Edinburgh International Festival.
La Scala opera house released this statement:
The death of Roberto De Simone deprives Italian culture of a leading figure, whose passion for the expressions of popular music and theatre in Naples has extended from ethnographic and musicological research to creations for the stage (suffice to remember La gatta Cenerentola) and cultural initiatives. He was the artistic director of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Director of the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory in Naples and Academician of Santa Cecilia, and has directed operas for many major theatres.
La Scala’s CEO Ortombina, the workers and management of the Teatro alla Scala have a special fondness for him after many years of collaboration.
De Simone’s first contact with Teatro alla Scala was in 1972, as the musical researcher for a concert of the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare at the Piccola Scala. It was Riccardo Muti who asked him to direct Verdi’s Nabucco for the inauguration of the 1986/87 Season. The sets were by Mauro Carosi, the costumes by Odette Nicoletti and with Renato Bruson and Ghena Dimitrova on stage.
The immense success of the production led to it being revived in 1988 and 1996, but above all cemented a relationship with Maestro Muti, which in 1989 produced Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice with Bernadette Manca di Nissa, Lella Cuberli and Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz, and in Pergolesi’s Lo frate ‘nnamorato, and for the opening of the 1990/91 Season on 7 December 1990 for Mozart’s Idomeneo with Giuseppe Sabbatini. The third 7 December season opening with Muti was in 1995 with Die Zauberflöte, with a cast including Andrea Rost, Paul Groves and Simon Keenlyside. This production will be available on LaScalaTv, and Rai Cultura will pay homage to Roberto De Simone on the Rai 5 television channel on Friday 11 Aprile at 9.15pm.
In 1997, as part of a partnership with the Teatro di San Carlo, La Scala was host to Te voglio bene assaje, a choreographic work by De Simone and Luciano Cannito to music composed by the students of the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory based on Donizetti themes. Again in collaboration with the San Carlo ensemble, La Scala presented Paisiello’s Il Socrate immaginario in 2007.
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Italian ballerina Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
