The Garda Festival is a multidisciplinary summer festival held on the magnificent shores of Lake Garda, Italy’s largest body of water, which attracts millions of tourists from around the world each year.
The programme covers music – both classical and pop – as well as cinema and other arts. The Festival was recently established in 2023 by the Fondo Niccolò Piccinni (the Niccolò Piccinni Fund). The Fund was established in Belgium in 1961 by descendants of the 18th-century composer Piccinni, with the aim of preserving the memory of the composer who was extremely popular in his time. Since 2021, the Fund has been based in Castelnuovo del Garda, on the Veronese shore of Lake Garda.
The ceremony for awarding the Piccinni Prize, now in its 44th edition, will take place at the Verona Conservatoire on 1 August. The award will be presented to the Milanese director Pier Luigi Pizzi – now 96, and still working – an undisputed master of theatre direction and set design and a pillar of Italian culture.
Honouring his career will be the Romanian-Swiss soprano Elena Moșuc, who has appeared in Pizzi’s productions many times. She will be awarded the 2026 Cigno del Garda Prize. They will be joined by the young Chinese baritone Yu Rouyang and the pianist Fabio Maggio.
Previous winners of the Piccinni Prize include Carlo Bergonzi, Sylvano Bussotti, Franco Corelli, Leyla Gencer, Nicolaj Ghiaurov, Christa Ludwig, Giovanni Martinelli, Mady Mesplé, Georges Prêtre, Renzo Rossellini, Joan Sutherland, and Franco Zeffirelli.
Participants in previous editions of the Festival include actresses Sandra Milo and Ornella Muti; musicians Ivo Pogorelić and Uto Ughi; opera singers Leo Nucci and Carmela Remigio; dancers from Teatro alla Scala; and the pop singer Patty Pravo. This year, popular music will be represented by the extravagant Italian singer, Donatella Rettore.
Maximilien Seren-Piccinni, President of the Niccolò Piccinni Fund and Artistic Director of the Festival, says:
The Garda Festival is a tangible way to bring the public closer to beauty, offering experiences that combine artistic quality of international standing with a connection to local identity. This year’s theme, ‘Beyond the Surface’, stems from a specific desire: to look beyond appearances and into the heart of things, exploring the human soul more deeply. What lies hidden can sometimes be frightening, but we are convinced that it is precisely there that truth and uniqueness reside. Guided by art, we can discover that these mysteries, once unveiled, are by no means a threat but an extraordinary discovery, capable of filling us with wonder and finally bringing us closer to one another.
From 24 July until 1 August
All events are free to attend
Saxophonist Jacopo Taddei, alongside Filippo Farinelli on the piano, will give a concert at Peschiera del Garda, with the chance to hear in advance pieces from the duo’s new album – Shaping the Curve.
Also at the Summer Theatre in Peschiera del Garda is Donatella Rettore with her concert Splendida-Mente, where the chameleon-like singer will sing her past hits and latest songs, as well as recount anecdotes from her long career which began in the mid-70s.
Still in Peschiera del Garda, the 270th anniversary of Mozart’s birth will be celebrated with the concert The Mozart Wunderkammer by I Musici Piccinniani. The ensemble is a new initiative from the Niccolò Piccinni Fund.
The festival moves indoors at the Chiesa di San Martino in Peschiera for Viola Nocturna, a concert by Vittorio Benaglia, the 27-year-old violist whose career has already taken him to Carnegie Hall and the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Italy’s MUSICA magazine said he is “a magnificent interpreter, capable of drawing from the viola unique sonorities and timbres, almost akin to the human voice.”
The concluding event is the Premio Piccinni, celebrating the career of Pier Luigi Pizzi.
