ELENA BARBALICH

Elena Barbalich was born in Venice where she graduated with distinction from Ca’ Foscari University with a thesis on the performance history of Verdi’s Aida at Teatro La Scala, Milan. While a student, she also took a course in acting at the Teatro all’Avogaria in Venice and furthered her musical training with the private study of piano and choral singing.

 

She began working in the opera theatre as assistant director to Giorgio Marini and Italo Nunziata in major Italian theatres such as La Fenice in Venice, the Verona Arena, Teatro Regio of Turin, Teatro Carlo Fenice of Genoa, Teatro Comunale of Bologna, Teatro San Carlo of Naples and Teatro Massimo of Palermo. In 1998, she made her directorial debut with La Serva Padrona by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, performed at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan with Tiziana Fabbricini in the lead role and the Verdi Orchestra conducted by Manlio Benzi.

 

She has directed numerous works from the contemporary repertoire such as Phonophie by Mauricio Kagel (Italian Premiere), collaborating also with the libretto for the recorded edition, and Die Rätsel von Mozart by Mauro Cardi, Matteo D’Amico, Olga Neuwirth, Fabio Nieder and Betty Olivero (world premiere), staged in February 1999 at the Teatro delle Fondamenta Nuove in Venice for the Malipiero Foundation in association with the Teatro La Fenice.

 

In September 2001, again for the Teatro la Fenice, she staged Per Voce Preparata, a performance of music by Aperghis, Cage, Casale, Doati, Kagel, Pachini, and Schnebel, which inaugurated the reopening of the Teatro Malibran in Venice. In Paris, at the Auditorium de la Cité des Arts in January 2000, she directed Recitations by Aperghis and curated the revival of Phonophonie by Kagel. She also staged Kagel’s Il Tribuno at the Barga Opera Festival, with repeat performances at the Tourcoing Festival organized by Jean Claude Malgoire, on the occasion of which she also staged the revival of Die Rätsel von Mozart.

 

In 2005, for the Teatro San Carlo of Naples, she directed the world premiere of Marcello Panni's opera Garibaldi en Sicile with the participation of Luigi Ontani.

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In 2000 she was awarded a "Stipendium" as Stage Director by the Richard Wagner Stipendienstiftung.

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Barbalich has created numerous stage productions from the classical repertoire, collaborating almost exclusively with the costume designer Tommaso Lagattolla, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bari. In 2003 she directed La Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni and Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo at the Teatro Verdi in Salerno and at the Teatro Politeama in Catanzaro (December 2003). For the same theatres, the following year, her production of Tosca opened the season at the Politeama in Catanzaro. In 2006, she inaugurated the Salerno opera season with Verdi's Macbeth, a staging which was purchased by the Teatro São Carlos in Lisbon and revived in that theatre in 2007 and 2015. In September 2008 she restaged her Macbeth in La Coruña, in 2010 at the Teatro Calderón in Valladolid and in 2016 at the Teatre Principal in Palma di Majorca. In May 2007, she curated the re-edition of Tosca for the Petruzzelli Foundation in Bari under the direction of Daniel Oren, which was revived in 2009 for the same theatre with Renato Palumbo directing. In November 2007, at the Teatro Verdi in Sassari, she directed Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias and the first ever stage version of Debussy's La Damoiselle élue. In September 2010, for the Tito Schipa Conservatory of Lecce, she staged Giovanni Paisiello's Il Matrimonio inaspettato and, in October 2010, at the Petruzzelli Theatre in Bari, Verdi's La Traviata. In 2011 she directed the opera Il Cappello di paglia di Firenze by Nino Rota for an extended tour that included the Teatro Sociale of Como, Teatro Ponchielli of Cremona, Teatro Opera Giocosa of Savona, Teatro Grande of Brescia, Teatro Fraschini of Pavia and Teatro Sociale of Rovigo, revived at the Petruzzelli Theatre in 2014 and in 2018 at the San Carlo Theatre in Naples.  In October 2012, she again staged her production of Tosca, inaugurating the opera seasons of the Theatres of Brescia, Pavia and Cremona. In 2015, she created a new staging of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro at the Teatro Regio in Turin, broadcast on Rai5, as well as in 40 French cinemas, with a repeat staging in 2018 for the same foundation. Also in 2015, she directed Vivaldi's Juditha Triumphans at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, which was broadcast on France2 television network. In 2017, she directed a production of Verdi's Rigoletto in Pavia which subsequently toured to Como, Brescia, Cremona, and Bergamo, with repeat performances, in September 2018, at the Opéra de Toulon. In February 2019 she staged a production of Mozart's Il Sogno di Scipione for the Teatro La Fenice in collaboration with students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, and in October of the same year her production of Macbeth was reprised for the seventh time at the Fraschini Theatre in Pavia and in the theatres of the Circuito Lombardo with conductor Gianluigi Gelmetti.

In October 2022, she staged Bellini's Norma for the Circuito Lombardo, opening the opera season at the theatres of Brescia, Cremona and Pisa. In August 2023 she reprised Juditha Triumphans at the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik. She is currently working on a staging of Orpheus by Georg Philipp Telemann in Stockholm at the Drottningholm Slottsteater.

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Barbalich was the librettist of the flash operas written by the Venetian composer Paolo Furlani, Otòno Shiräbe and Singin' in the brain, from which a suite was extracted and performed on 28 September 2009 at the Venice Music Biennale.

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Since 2012 she has been a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice where she teaches Theatre Directing.

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