About the Arena Opera Festival

Arena di Verona is a Roman amphitheater, one of the most remarkable archaeological monuments in Europe. It was built in the I century. our era, in the last years of the reign of Emperor Augustus. Today "arena di Verona" is known all over the world thanks to the annual summer Opera festival taking place within its walls. The festival was opened on 10 August 1913 with a production of Giuseppe Verdi's Opera Aida. On the stage of the arena di Verona performed outstanding artists such as Renata Tebaldi, Maria Callas, Mario Del Monaco, Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras, Luciano Pavarotti, Tullio Serafin, Riccardo Muti.

The Opera season annually attracts more than half a million spectators from all over the world. The repertoire of the festival is mainly mass, large-scale works ("Nabucco", "Troubadour", "Aida", "Carmen", "Turandot"). 

Although the Arena di Verona has always maintained its vocation as a performance venue throughout its millenary history: from the naumachie or staged naval battles of ancient Rome to the jousts of the Middle Ages, and on to Rossini in the early 1800s, it was not until 1913 that it became the true home of great open-air opera performances, with an Aida that epitomised the Art Nouveau trend of the time, reconstructed from original sketches and still beloved of audiences today. 

Always true to its traditional role as democratic propagator of musical culture in Europe, as well as popular, accessible and universal home to musical theatre, loved by opera stars, crowned heads, Hollywood actors and audiences from all over the world, the Arena di Verona has always been one of the most influential locations for inclusiveness in art.