Theatre 2025

Theatre is an ephemeral art, lacking the economies of cinema and the universal embrace of music. Yet it is in good health. SIAE's 2025 data, growing steadily for some years now, confirm that theatre is a living, strategic node in the contemporary cultural scene. The optimism of the numbers, however, calls for some reflection.

The timid +1.8% rise in performances reveals an overall productive laziness in the system and suggests that the general tendency is to optimise to the maximum the popular formats already tested, with a consequent low appetite for risk, for new dramaturgy and for new generations. It is no surprise that among the most profitable titles musicals and comedies dominate, built around a popular lead and revived season after season. The +10.5% leap in spending too, disproportionate to the offering, is a symptom more of higher ticket prices than of genuine attention to productions.

This picture might suggest a market-oriented sector, but it does not work that way. Theatre, like other areas of live performance, is governed by a system of public cultural welfare: the FNSV (formerly FUS), around 420 million divided among the various sectors. Theatre absorbs roughly 97 of these, redistributed among institutions and companies through strongly quantitative ministerial criteria. These parameters end up penalising generational turnover and new productive ventures. In essence the State supports theatre, but does not act as an engine of cultural risk.

That things need to change is shown by another decisive figure: despite the rise in spending and the inertia of the programmes, spectators grow by 4.4%. In the era of streaming and digitalisation, that more people are willing to leave home, pay more and share an experience is something out of the ordinary. It expresses a demand for community and sharing that other fields do not intercept. Theatres are not merely places of consumption: they generate social capital and take shape as an act of anthropological resistance.

If one wants to understand something of the sentiments of the young, of contemporary anxieties, of gender disparities and of new languages, an answer will be found more easily in the theatre than elsewhere.

We hope the Performing Arts Code, now almost at the legislative finish line, will take account of this. The implementing decrees above all will need the courage to differentiate the parameters and, where there is cultural risk or attention to contemporary dramaturgy, to lower the quantitative bar. That +4.4% of spectators demands not more market, but a growth in vision as a challenge for the future.

Looking at the most striking figures for opera across Italy's fourteen Foundations, the Arena di Verona immediately stands out as the absolute protagonist: it dominates the top ten productions, both by attendance and by spending. No one matches its Nabucco, with a record of more than one hundred thousand admissions across twelve performances, in line with the seats available each evening. Celebrated and famous thanks to Va' pensiero, the chorus that has come to identify melodrama itself, the work surpasses Aida, which - with fourteen dates, two more - stops at 98,616 spectators. Verdi reigns supreme at the Arena: not only with the two "en plein air" scores, defined by the open spaces of their action and ideal for the Arena's tiers, but also with La Traviata in fourth place and Rigoletto in sixth, reinforcing the enduring appeal of the favourites of the "popular Trilogy".

Staying with the top ten by attendance and spending, other figures stand out. The Teatro di San Carlo, with a production of The Barber of Seville included in the Scuola InCanto educational project, offers 44 performances and reaches 48,020 admissions, engaging a new young audience and introducing it to Rossini's perfect construction, on a libretto drawn from Beaumarchais. At the opposite end stands La Scala, fifth in the spending ranking, where a box-office record is reached for "just" 17,052 spectators across the nine performances of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.

Banned under Soviet censorship, the opera received for the first time the international showcase of 7 December, opening the Milanese theatre's season fifty years after Shostakovich's death. Here too the culturally powerful presence of Cosi fan tutte brought La Scala a significant double win: ninth place with 17,469 spectators (nine performances, essentially sold out) and tenth place by spending.

Important figures for the last masterpiece of the Italian Mozart, on a libretto by Da Ponte, an absolute jewel of Viennese classicism.

Compared with 2024, the sector sees a rise in performances and a substantial hold in attendance against a healthy increase in spending. Venues, organisers and active municipalities are growing, proof of a vitality confirmed by the distribution of performances throughout the year: spring and autumn remain the richest seasons, while Lazio, Tuscany and Sicily stand out for figures already high and risen further since 2024. The leaders Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna are slightly down. Among the trailing regions, Molise goes from 2 to 4 performances, doubling both spectators and spending, together with Calabria, from 11 to 29 performances and from 5,573 to 12,035 spectators. Figures far from the 474,100 of Veneto, the leader also in the spending-to-attendance ratio, up 7.9%. Average individual spending here is worth 83.79 euros, just above Lombardy at 82.85 euros. Strong figures that set the geography of the Arena, La Fenice and La Scala clearly apart, yet substantially unchanged from the previous year. Lazio, Tuscany, Campania, Apulia and Sicily are advancing, contributing to the flattering result of 2,974 total performances, against 2,880 in 2024. An important milestone, though still improvable, in the perspective of making the most of both the cultural heritage of musical theatre and the extraordinary spread of historic halls across our country.