On April 16 (additional performances through April 19) the Teatro Comunale in Bolzano will present the world premiere of Matteo Franceschini’s Forèst. Forèst is an opera – a Food Opera – in which the focus is food and wine.

The audience – 50 people for each performance – will take their seat at the centre of an installation specially mounted on the stage of Bolzano’s Teatro Comunale. Each person will be furnished with a kit containing foods specially created by Alessandro Gilmozzi, one of the best chefs in Italy, and an expert in dishes that take their form and taste from the flavours of the forest. The composer invites the audience not only to listen and to look but also to taste so each individual is transported into a multi-sensorial universe in which each art form relates to the others.

The libretto by Volodia Serre (who also acts as stage director) traces a philosophical pathway that unfolds through the arc of the four seasons by way of images, memories, literary citations and culinary associations inspired by the traditions of the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Dolomite Mountains.

The cast is made up of two singers (Laura Catrani, soprano, and Nicholas Isherwood, bass-baritone), an actor (Clément Bresson), and two instrumentalists (Pierre Cussac, accordion, and Leo Morello, cello). The composer himself will produce the live electronics.

Forèst is a joint-production of the Fondazione Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento (realised in collaboration with the Fondazione Teatro Comunale e Auditorium di Bolzano) together with the Neue Oper Wien and of the Festival Paris quartier d’été (in collaboration with Arcal-Paris).

Franceschini: work list