La clemenza di Tito

Opening Opera Season

For the Opening Opera night Season on Thursday, November 20, 2025, black tie is required

Conductor Ivor Bolton
Director Paul Curran

La Fenice staging
with Italian and English surtitles

At the beginning of August 1791 Mozart received the urgent commission for the composition of an opera, from the National Theatre of Prague for the solemn celebrations of the recently crowned King of Bohemia, Leopold II. Seriously ill – the composer was to pass away just three months later – but financially in dire straits, the brilliant artist had no hesitation in accepting the proposal to set to music the old libretto by Metastasio –  written in 1734 in honour of Charles VI, Leopold’s grandfather – based on the figure of the Roman emperor Titus who, having miraculously escaped a conspiracy, forgives the conspirators with an act of clemency. Mozart demanded, however, that the now dated libretto – which had already been put to music by about forty composers – be adapted to the new tastes of the public, and entrusted its revision to Caterino Mazzolà, the then poet of the imperial theatres. The result was La Clemenza di Tito, paving the way for the revival of late-Baroque opera seria, the protagonists of which at the end of the eighteenth century were stereotyped and stilted. In Mozart’s last masterpiece, however, the eponymous hero and the other characters who gravitate around him, reveal a psychological depth that makes them credible, animated by a new breath of life. It was in this light that most contemporary critics reviewed the opera, resulting in a renewed interest in a work, whose merits had not always been appreciated in the past.