Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo Puccini

A project of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino promoted by Fondazione CR Firenze

Opera in the piazza, free and open to everyone: seven performances taking place in Florence on two occasions and then in Scandicci, Pontassieve, Empoli, Montevarchi and Grosseto, from June 27 to July 7, 2026.

Florence, May 27, 2026 – “What if opera returned to the streets, not metaphorically, but literally?” This provocative question came from the creators Fabio Cherstich and Gianluigi Toccafondo, who posed it years ago to Carlo Fuortes in 2016, then Superintendent of the Opera di Roma. He embraced the idea and launched a project that would go on to receive widespread acclaim: a truck drives into a square, opens its container, and transforms into an open-air stage. Orchestra, singers, lights, costumes — everything happens there, outdoors, in the street, in a piazza, just steps away from the audience. Now this project, enthusiastically revived by Fondazione CR Firenze, arrives in Tuscany with seven free performances for all, staging Giacomo Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi in Florence on two occasions and then in Scandicci, Pontassieve, Empoli, Montevarchi and Grosseto, from June 27 to July 7, 2026 at 9:00 p.m. Fabio Cherstich directs the production, while Gianluigi Toccafondo creates the animated drawings and visual imagery.

“With Opera Camion, the Maggio literally enters the streets and squares, engaging with new audiences, involving families, young people, and citizens who may never have attended an opera before,” highlights Mayor Sara Funaro. “It is a project that reflects the direction we want culture to take in our city: a culture that increasingly opens itself to the community, leaves its traditional spaces behind, breaks down barriers, and makes music and theatre ever more accessible, inclusive, and shared. It is an important sign in continuity with the remarkable work initiated at the Maggio Musicale by Superintendent Carlo Fuortes, strengthening its role not only as an institution of international cultural excellence but as a living, open institution increasingly close to citizens of all ages. Our thanks also go to Fondazione CR Firenze, which continues to promote and support initiatives capable of combining high cultural quality with attention to the social dimension, helping make culture a tool for participation, inclusion, and growth for the entire community.”

Opera Camion 2026 “Il Maggio in piazza” takes shape thanks to Fondazione CR Firenze, which recognized and embraced its profound social value for the region. Opera Camion carries with it its entire philosophy, its cultural impact, its power to bring people together and foster inclusion, its message of sharing Beauty, backed by the guarantee and artistic signature of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and its Academy, which provides the young singing talents and the Orchestra conducted by Pietro Mazzetti. “With Opera Camion, the extraordinary artists of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino leave the theatre to meet people in neighborhoods and places of everyday life,” says Bernabò Bocca, President of Fondazione CR Firenze. “It is a collective cultural and artistic experience that invites citizens to stop, listen, and allow themselves to be surprised, also reaching those who have never entered an opera house. Through this initiative we strengthen our collaboration with the Fondazione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, whom I thank, offering the public an initiative of not only great artistic quality but also strong social value, perfectly embodying the idea of culture promoted by Fondazione CR Firenze. Bringing Puccini into the piazzas means reaffirming culture as a common good: accessible and alive.”

Opera Camion 2026 “Il Maggio in piazza” revives the original spirit of musical theatre, when opera was itinerant, popular entertainment performed in public squares and fairs. The truck becomes the most direct means of bringing that dimension back into the present day. “That was precisely the idea that captivated me at the time, when together with Cherstich and Toccafondo we launched the project,” says Carlo Fuortes, Superintendent of the Maggio. “A successful project that over the years has moved steadily forward — or rather, it is better to say on four wheels — and which now arrives, to my great delight, in Florence.”

A project with a clear philosophy: those who attend are not the orderly audience of a theatre hall. There is the curious passerby, the family with children, the citizen who brings a chair from home (indeed, everyone is invited to do so), the young people who have never seen an opera in their lives. A spontaneous, unpredictable audience: people who come intentionally, people who happen upon it by chance, people who stay for the whole opera or simply stop briefly before moving on. Yet they all respond without filters to this theatre that literally comes to them, reaching and surprising them in unexpected ways. In the piazza, the protective distance of the theatre disappears: the singers are just steps away from the spectators, and the space is open and exposed. “This closeness makes everything more vulnerable but also more authentic,” continues the Superintendent. “Opera and music breathe together with those who watch and listen. Many people discover opera for the first time in exactly this way — without tickets, without conventions, without intimidation. The truck arrives, the performance happens, and then it moves on again. A nomadic theatre that appears and disappears, making everyone part of a collective ritual.”

The Truck as a Scenic Machine

Fabio Cherstich and Gianluigi Toccafondo, creators of the project — with Cherstich directing Gianni Schicchi and Toccafondo creating the animated images and videos — conceive the truck not merely as a logistical support but as a dramaturgical element. Its industrial silhouette and its nature as a mobile urban object remain visible and active throughout the performance: the vehicle becomes architecture, scenery, symbol. It is not a miniature reproduction of what happens in a theatre; rather, it creates a device specifically designed for public space. A subtle difference that radically changes the relationship between stage and audience.

In his director’s notes, available on the Maggio website, Fabio Cherstich writes: “With this Gianni Schicchi, together with my long-time companion Gianluigi Toccafondo, I return to work on Opera Camion eight years after our last shared project, La Cenerentola. Rediscovering this itinerant device today, after so many journeys through piazzas, neighborhoods, and urban spaces, also means rediscovering a very particular way of making musical theatre: direct, popular, mobile, profoundly alive. From the very beginning we imagined Opera Camion not as a simple traveling stage, but as a true dramaturgical machine. The truck does not transport the show: it is the show. It is architecture, scenery, theatrical mechanism, urban presence. It arrives, opens before the audience, and suddenly transforms a square into a place of visions (…) For Gianni Schicchi, Gianluigi and I imagined the truck as a sort of visionary hearse, a mobile house inhabited by greedy relatives, ghosts, and Dantean figures. The entire opera unfolds inside, above, below, and around this constantly changing scenic machine. Toccafondo’s painted and animated images transform the truck into a distorted and popular Florence, grotesque and nocturnal, suspended somewhere between the Middle Ages, comic books, and black comedy (…) The Dantean origins of the opera will be strongly present in our interpretation. Gianni Schicchi was in fact born from a brief but famous passage in the Inferno, and for this reason, alongside the young singers of the Accademia del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, there will also be two acting figures. Florentine actress Maya Quattrini will portray Dante and act as master of ceremonies, guiding the audience through the story like an infernal, ironic, visionary narrator. Also on stage will be the dead Buoso, played by performer Andrea Fantauzzi: a mute, ghostly, almost Beckettian presence who continues to inhabit the performance even after his own death.”

Why Gianni Schicchi

For the Tuscan edition of Opera Camion 2026 “Il Maggio in piazza,” the artistic choice fell on Gianni Schicchi, Giacomo Puccini’s one-act opera with a libretto by Giovacchino Forzano. The work by the great composer from Lucca is set in Tuscany, specifically in Florence in 1299, with the cunning notary who deceives an entire family of greedy relatives in order to secure the city’s finest house and ensure the love between his daughter Lauretta and the young Rinuccio. Comedy, rapid pacing, an unforgettable gallery of characters, and at the center one of the most famous arias in Puccini’s repertoire: “O mio babbino caro.” Since it is a one-act opera lasting approximately one hour, with a tightly connected dramatic structure from scene to scene and note to note, Gianni Schicchi requires no cuts and can be presented in its entirety: popular theatre in its purest form, perfect for meeting audiences in public squares. The young talents of the Accademia del Maggio bring voice and body to Puccini’s characters, accompanied by the Academy Orchestra itself: a project that is also an investment in the next generation of artists.

The Orchestra of the Accademia del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

The ensemble of the Orchestra of the Accademia del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino is composed of young instrumentalists from the Youth Orchestra Lab (YOL), an artistic residency program for young musicians created by the Academy in collaboration with the Teatro del Maggio and in partnership with the Teatro Goldoni of Livorno, funded by the Regione Toscana with support from the European Social Fund. The artistic residency is part of Giovanisì, the Regione Toscana project dedicated to youth independence.