Rome Opera premieres La vita nuda, Matteo D’Amico’s opera from two Pirandello plays

Rome Opera is marking 90 years since Luigi Pirandello’s death with a new commission. La vita nuda, by the Rome-born composer Matteo D’Amico to a libretto by Sandro Cappelletto, has its world premiere at the Teatro Nazionale (Rome Opera’s chamber theatre) on 20 October 2026, directed by Cecilia Ligorio and conducted by Alessandro Cadario.

The one-act opera brings together two of Pirandello’s plays: L’uomo dal fiore in bocca, in which illness bursts into its protagonist’s life, and La patente, the grotesque courtroom tale of a man pointed at as a bringer of bad luck. Through D’Amico’s score and a dramaturgy by Ligorio and Cappelletto, the two merge into a single work that offers a “contemporary and unsettling view of one of the 20th century’s greatest playwrights”.

A station where time stops

Ligorio frames both stories in “a small, anonymous railway station” early in the morning. A man misses his train by a minute; then a fault cuts the line, the trains stop, and every departure is suspended. In that time beyond measure, she explains, memory, desire, fear and regret rise to the surface, masks crack, and loneliness, illness and the need to be seen emerge, until the station becomes a limbo in which each person discovers they are alone together with the others.

Perhaps La vita nuda is life when the forms with which we organise it and make it bearable can no longer protect us, and so, waiting for a train, we discover that we were waiting for life itself.

D’Amico and Cappelletto, who renew a long collaboration with this opera, describe Chiàrchiaro and the man with the flower in his mouth meeting by chance, united by the mishaps that afflict travellers everywhere, every day, when they are plunged into the dark of a sudden blackout. “Everyone moves, everyone is restless, driven by an anxiety that chokes them,” they say.

Eight voices

D’Amico, making his house debut, has devoted much of his output to the meeting of music, literature and theatre. He describes La vita nuda as an opera in which every character is important, each singing in their own distinct voice of being naked in the world, before life and death. The characters also listen to one another, he says, in a polyphonic overlapping in which every musical line and every phrase carries an intention, an impulse.

Everything comes together in the final ensemble, when, in the voices and the orchestra, a tone of intimate meditation prevails, as if all eight protagonists were reflecting on the truths, ever topical and necessary, told by the great playwright.

His earlier stage works include Farinelli, la voce perduta (1996), Lavinia fuggita (2004), Dannata epicurea (2004), Patto di sangue (2009), Le Malentendu (2009) and Il viaggio di G. Mastorna (2021), and for dance he has written Mascherata veneziana, La Ronde and Animae corpus. He has been artistic director of the Accademia Filarmonica Romana and, from 2000 to 2002, of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and has been a member of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia since 2006.

The cast

Omar Montanari is the man with the flower in his mouth and Andrea Concetti is Rosario Chiàrchiaro, protagonist of La patente. They are joined by Annunziata Vestri (the barmaid / the wife of the man with the flower in his mouth), Maria Grazia Schiavo (Rosinella, Chiàrchiaro’s daughter / a young woman in love), Blagoj Nacoski (a customer / Judge 1), Marcello Nardis (Judge 2 / a young man in love), Roberto Abbondanza (Judge 3) and Federico Longhi (Judge D’Andrea).

The sets, inspired by neorealist cinema, are by Gregorio Zurla, with costumes by Vera Pierantoni Giua and lighting by Fabio Barettin. The Orchestra of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma plays.

Ligorio, who recently won the Franco Abbiati Prize from the Italian music critics for her staging of Il re pastore, which opened at the Teatro Nazionale in 2025, returns to the company after directing for numerous theatres and festivals in Italy and abroad.

Back on the podium

Cadario made his Rome Opera debut at the Caracalla Festival with Prokofiev’s Cenerentola in 2023, followed by Johann Strauss II’s Il pipistrello at the Costanzi in January 2025 and, later that year at Caracalla, Mozart’s Don Giovanni in Vasily Barkhatov’s staging. In 2024 he conducted the world premiere of D’Amico’s Il buio non ha voce. Quattro storie in musica per voce femminile e orchestra at the Petruzzelli in Bari.

For Cadario, any successful interpretation depends on rigorous study of the score and an almost utopian dedication to realising every detail. “That’s why I approach new scores with the same motivation I reserve for repertoire works,” he says, “reminding myself how important it is to conduct the repertoire with the freshness and wonder of a world premiere.”

Dates and booking

La vita nuda is at the Teatro Nazionale, Rome, on Tuesday 20 October 2026 at 8pm, Thursday 22 and Friday 23 October at 8pm, Saturday 24 October at 6pm and Sunday 25 October at 4.30pm.

Tickets from operaroma.it/spettacoli/la-vita-nuda and at the box office during opening hours.