The Opera of the Living: A Bill to Make Italian Opera Houses Stage Living Composers

The auditorium of the Teatro alla Scala, Milan. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

by Enrico Melozzi

A legislative proposal for contemporary operatic creation. The articulated text, in eleven articles, is in the appendix.

On 23 December 2024, the Ministry of Culture signed decree number 463. Inside it is a provision that almost nobody has read: to receive public funding, the national drama theatres must produce every year at least four productions by living authors, two of them Italian and one under 35. For drama the State demands the present. In the same decree the theatres of tradition (teatri di tradizione) have no similar obligation, and the opera and symphonic foundations (fondazioni lirico-sinfoniche), which run on a regulatory track of their own, never have had one: nobody asks them for a single title written by a living person.

It was not always like this. Law 800 of 1967, the one that gave the opera houses the form we know, set aside in Article 24 at least two hundred million lire a year for the staging of “brand-new Italian works or works receiving their first performance,” and in Article 31 rewarded with additional contributions those who staged them. The Republic of Petrassi and Nono took it for granted that an opera house should produce operas. Then that rule dissolved in fifty years of postponements and decrees, and the system settled into being a museum.

We pay for the museum. The opera and symphonic foundations number fourteen; in 2022 they took in about 80 million euros at the box office, nearly half of it from La Scala alone, and received 278 million in public and private contributions. In 2026 the national fund for the performing arts allocated them 199 million. It is money well spent: in 2022 thirteen foundations out of fourteen closed with a surplus, and the houses have filled up again. But whoever covers three quarters of a budget has the right to ask that part of that money produce the repertoire of the day after tomorrow, because today’s great repertoire was yesterday’s contemporary. Turandot, the youngest opera among those that fill the world’s houses, turned one hundred this year. If tomorrow we stopped writing operas, the season programmes would not notice for decades. History would.

Opera was not born a museum. Rossini wrote thirty-nine titles for a market that devoured and forgot them, Donizetti seventy. Verdi negotiated contracts like an impresario, wrote for the paying public, accepted the boos and the triumphant second nights. For a century melodrama was Italian popular culture: people hummed it in the street, argued in the upper gallery, queued for novelties. Shutting all this in the glass case of the untouchable masterpiece is not defending tradition: it is betraying it in its vital mechanism, which was to produce.

I foresee the objection: quotas are dirigisme. I answer with the calendar. Since 2018 a European directive has required streaming platforms, Netflix included, to carry at least 30 percent European works in their catalogues. French radio broadcasts 40 percent French-language song under a 1994 law. Italian cinema lives on tax credits under Law 220 of 2016. Drama, as said, has its living-author quotas from a December 2024 decree. The quota for creation is the rule across European culture; opera is the only exception, and it is the most absurd exception, because it is the art in which Italy invented the genre. I add what matters most to me: this proposal contains no requirement of nationality or language. The quota concerns new operas, written by anyone, sung in any tongue. It does not defend a passport. It defends a trade, that of the composer and the librettist, the only workers in the performing arts of whom the system demands, as a condition of going on stage, that they have been dead for at least a century.

The proposal stands on four legs. The first is gradualism: no 50 percent dropped overnight, which would sink the budgets in two seasons, but a ten-year scale. It starts from 10 percent of new or recent productions, rises to 20 with an obligation of one world premiere a year for each foundation, and reaches full operation at 30. A theatre that mounts ten titles begins by devoting one to the present. To ask for less would be ridiculous, to ask for more would be irresponsible.

The second leg is money. A National Fund for Unperformed and Contemporary Opera, 30 million a year, which pays commissions with fair fees, supports stagings and, the decisive point, finances revivals: at least 30 percent of the fund goes to second and third productions of works already christened, because an opera performed only once is not an opera, it is an exercise that cost two million. Alongside the fund, a tax credit on the model of cinema for those who invest in world premieres, and an obligation to record and publish every funded work, in agreement with publishers, record labels, platforms and rights-management societies, SIAE and Soundreef included. Today a world premiere without a recording vanishes the very night of its debut.

The third leg is the Festival of New Opera (Festival della nuova lirica). I know Sanremo from the podium, and I know what that machine can do: turn songs never heard before into collective heritage within five evenings. The mechanism can be lent to opera. Twelve theatres, each with a new opera of its own and its own star singers, the competing arias set beside arias from the great repertoire, a section for under-35s, the public’s vote alongside a jury, the winner opening the season of one of the theatres and then touring a national circuit of revivals. Production and broadcast fall to RAI through its service contract: the one in force, 2023-2028, does not name opera among its obligations even once. It is a gap that can be filled with one line, at the first useful revision. The festival can change city every year, and every city will notice.

The fourth leg holds the others together and concerns the classics. Nobody touches Traviata: quite the opposite. In the cities of art the proposal establishes permanent repertoire circuits, exempt from quotas and from sanctions, where the tourist who has a single evening in Venice or Verona will always find a great title performed properly, with a live orchestra and no shortcuts. The classics become a permanent offering, like the Uffizi; the theatres, freed from the obligation of being only a showcase, go back to being workshops.

One last word on method. On the committee that will evaluate the projects sit musicologists, composers, representatives of singers, orchestral players and stage workers, people from television and the recording industry, and two citizens chosen by lot, as in the civic assemblies that in Ireland and France have tackled questions far thornier than a season programme. Opera was born an art of everyone, and the judgment of everyone should not frighten it. Those who fear the public have, as a rule, never had it on their side.

I know that someone will call it utopia. But utopia was the 50 percent; this is a ten-year scale, funded, with the numbers written beside every commitment. The articulated text is below, eleven articles. Everything can be amended: the percentages, the dates, the names. Anyone who wants to discuss it knows where to find me.

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Appendix. Provisions for the promotion of contemporary operatic creation and for the establishment of the Festival of New Opera

Articulated text prepared by the Melos editorial staff, drawn up on a proposal by Enrico Melozzi. Discussion draft.

Art. 1 (Purposes)

1. The Republic recognises opera as a living art and supports the creation, production, circulation and recording of new works of musical theatre, without requirements of nationality or language for the authors and the works.
2. This law pursues a balance between the programming of repertoire and the production of new operas, the growth of a new audience, also through the public broadcasting service, the generational renewal of authors and performers, and the protection of the employment of performing arts workers.

Art. 2 (Definitions)

1. For the purposes of this law, the following are meant:

1. “unperformed opera”: a work of musical theatre for voices and live orchestra, also with ensembles expanded to include electronic or unconventional instruments, never performed in staged form. The choice of style, musical language and libretto language is free;
2. “contemporary opera”: a work of musical theatre whose world premiere took place in the previous thirty years, or whose composer is living;
3. “repertoire opera”: any other opera;
4. “subsidised theatres”: the opera and symphonic foundations referred to in Legislative Decree no. 367 of 29 June 1996, and the theatres of tradition referred to in Article 28 of Law no. 800 of 14 August 1967.

Art. 3 (Quotas for new creation)

1. Starting from the second season after the entry into force of this law, the opera and symphonic foundations shall devote to unperformed or contemporary operas at least 10 percent of the opera productions of each season; the quota rises to 20 percent from the fifth season, with at least one world premiere per season, and to 30 percent from the tenth season.
2. From the fifth season the theatres of tradition shall programme at least one unperformed or contemporary opera per season.
3. The quotas are calculated on opera productions and coproductions; revivals of contemporary operas count toward the quota. Theatres shall indicate in the programme booklets and in communications to the public the category of each opera under Article 2.

Art. 4 (National Fund for Unperformed and Contemporary Opera)

1. There is established at the Ministry of Culture the National Fund for Unperformed and Contemporary Opera (FNOIC), with an endowment of 30 million euros a year, intended for:

1. commissions of unperformed operas, with fair minimum fees for composers and librettists set by ministerial decree, after consulting the authors’ organisations;
2. stagings of world premieres;
3. revivals and circulation of contemporary operas, for which at least 30 percent of the annual endowment is reserved;
4. audiovisual and record recording of the funded works.

2. Every opera funded by the FNOIC is recorded and made available to the public within twelve months of its first performance, through agreements with music publishers, record producers, distribution platforms and collective rights-management bodies.
3. A tax credit, on the model of Law no. 220 of 14 November 2016, is granted to those who invest in the production of world premieres, within the limits and in the manner established by decree of the Ministry of Culture in agreement with the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Art. 5 (National Committee for the Opera of the Present)

1. There is established the National Committee for the Opera of the Present (CNOP), a consultative and monitoring body made up of fourteen members: two citizens drawn by lot from among those who apply; three representatives of the music and media industries, one of them designated by RAI; two artists from popular music and entertainment; one working composer and one working librettist; one musicologist; one representative of opera singers, one of orchestra players and one of technical staff, designated by the comparatively most representative trade unions; one representative of the collective rights-management bodies.
2. The composition of the CNOP respects gender parity. Members serve for three years and cannot be renewed.
3. The CNOP gives opinions on FNOIC projects, verifies compliance with the quotas of Article 3 and adopts guidelines for the promotion and diffusion of new operatic production.

Art. 6 (Training and residencies)

1. Conservatories, academies and drama schools set up courses, workshops and masterclasses in composition, dramaturgy, directing and set design for contemporary musical theatre, founded on operatic singing and the orchestra and open to the integration of languages and instruments from other traditions.
2. Every opera and symphonic foundation that accesses the FNOIC hosts at least one composer or librettist in residence per season. The Ministry of Culture, after consulting the CNOP, awards scholarships and supports residencies, with priority for authors under 35.

Art. 7 (Festival of New Opera)

1. There is established the Festival of New Opera, an annual event in which twelve subsidised theatres take part, each with an unperformed or contemporary opera of its own production, presented in excerpts by its own performers. The operas may be written in any language.
2. The festival includes a section reserved for authors and ensembles under 35 and evenings devoted to the great repertoire performed by the same competing theatres.
3. The winner is proclaimed by a mixed jury and by public vote. The winning opera opens the season of one of the participating theatres; the operas in competition have priority access to the revival funding referred to in Article 4.
4. The production and the television, radio and digital broadcast of the festival constitute a public service obligation, to be incorporated in the service contract between the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy and RAI at the first useful revision.
5. The venue of the festival is assigned on rotation among Italian cities that apply. The festival’s regulations, including the number and format of the evenings, are adopted by ministerial decree, after consulting the CNOP.

Art. 8 (Permanent repertoire circuits in cities of art)

1. The Ministry of Culture, in agreement with the regions, local authorities and private operators, promotes permanent circuits of performance of repertoire operas in the cities with the strongest tourist vocation, with live performance and quality standards set by ministerial decree.
2. Performances in the circuits referred to in paragraph 1 do not count toward the quotas of Article 3 and are not subject to the measures of Article 10.

Art. 9 (Monitoring and transparency)

1. Subsidised theatres send the Ministry of Culture every year a report on the operas produced and programmed, divided by category, on audience results and on participation in the festival.
2. The Ministry of Culture publishes the data referred to in paragraph 1 in open format and presents to Parliament an annual report on the state of operatic creation in Italy, after consulting the CNOP.

Art. 10 (Non-compliance with quotas)

1. Non-compliance with the quotas of Article 3 entails a proportional reduction of the contributions drawn on the National Fund for Live Performance. In case of repeated non-compliance for three seasons, the theatre is excluded from FNOIC funding until the conditions are restored.

Art. 11 (Implementation and financial coverage)

1. The implementing decrees of this law are adopted within twelve months of its entry into force. For the first two seasons the application of the quotas is experimental and does not give rise to the measures of Article 10.
2. The costs deriving from this law, estimated at 50 million euros a year including the tax credit of Article 4, are covered, in the first financial year of application, by a corresponding reduction of the current-expenditure special funds in the budget of the Ministry of Economy and Finance.