In 2012, the Festival was extended to the rest of the year, enlarging the limits of its original summer months with the brilliant invention of the “Autumn Trilogy”, whose formula alternates three different operas on the same stage on consecutive nights. After the masterpieces of Giuseppe Verdi’s “popular” trilogy (Rigoletto, Trovatore, Traviata), the tribute to the composer from Busseto was replicated on his bicentenary, 2013, with his “Shakespearean” operas (Macbeth, Otello, Falstaff). In 2014 the trilogy offered the opportunity to admire the Ballet of the Mariinskij Theatre from St. Petersburg (Swan Lake, Giselle, ’900 Triptych), while in 2015 a tribute to Giacomo Puccini and his masterpiece La Bohème celebrated the genius of another universally known Italian composer. In 2016 new productions of the major Hungarian theatres (Countess Maritza by Kálmán, The Bat by Strauss, and The Merry Widow by Lehár) led the audience on a journey along the Danube river, a triptych dedicated to the operetta genre and the Middle-European culture. In 2017 the Trilogy brought three masterpieces “on the verge of the 20th century” to stage (Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni, Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo and Tosca by Giacomo Puccini), while in 2018 Verdi’s music was again the heart of the Trilogy with Nabucco, Otello, and Rigoletto. In 2019 the Trilogy featured three women who claimed their absolute freedom and right to choose a destiny of death: Bellini’s Norma, Verdi’s Aida, and Bizet’s Carmen, on a journey from the belcanto style to the dawn of Verismo. If in 2020 the Trilogy was cancelled due to the pandemic, in 2021 it returned to the stage with a dedication to Dante, through three new productions: Dante Metànoia by and with Sergei Polunin, Faust rapsodia by Luca Micheletti, and Paradiso XXXIII by and with Elio Germano and Teho Teardo, while the following year the Mozart – Da Ponte trilogy took centre stage with Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. In 2023, the Trilogy has been entrusted to Riccardo Muti’s expert guidance with the semi-staged performances of Norma and Nabucco and a gala entirely dedicated to Verdi. The following year, the triptych led the audience through the 17th-century Baroque with two new productions signed by Pier Luigi Pizzi and Ottavio Dantone at the head of Accademia Bizantina (Monteverdi’s Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria and Dido and Aeneas on the Day of St Cecilia, which combines two of Purcell’s works) and Jakub Józef Orliński’s recital.
