The Teatro Regio announces a cast change for Vivaldi’s oratorio Juditha triumphans, scheduled for Thursday 11 February 2027: the title role will be performed by contralto Sara Mingardo, who has kindly agreed to step in for Mara Gaudenzi.
For the Regio audience, this marks a prestigious return; the extraordinary career of the Venetian artist has indeed intertwined several times with the recent history of our Theatre, where she debuted in 1995 with A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Hippolyta), followed by successes in Händel’s Tamerlano (Andronico) in 1997, Cherubini’s Medea (Neris) in 2008, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (Galatea) in 2009, Händel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Cornelia) in 2014, and Vivaldi’s L’incoronazione di Dario (Statira) in 2017.
Winner of the “Toti Dal Monte” Competition in 1987, of two Grammy Awards in 2002 for Berlioz’s Les Troyens with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra, and of the Premio Abbiati in 2009, Sara Mingardo is one of the most acclaimed contralto voices of our time. Her career is highlighted by a long-standing collaboration with Claudio Abbado and by partnerships with some of the most illustrious conductors on the international scene: Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Myung-Whun Chung, Pierre Boulez, and Sir Antonio Pappano, alongside leading interpreters of early music such as Rinaldo Alessandrini, Ottavio Dantone, Fabio Biondi, and Jordi Savall. A soloist of rare eclecticism, she moves with equal authority through the concert repertoire – from Pergolesi to Mahler – and the operatic repertoire, which spans four centuries of music from Monteverdi to Berlioz.
The Teatro Regio would like to thank Sara Mingardo for her generous availability and looks forward with joy to welcoming her back to its stage.