About the work
“Cosa Nostra” is an opera in two parts by the German composer Anno Schreier to a German-language libretto by Georg Holzer. Schreier and Holzer had previously created the opera “Turing” (2022) for the Staatstheater Nürnberg, where the new work is also scheduled to premiere on 28 November 2026 in the opera house, directed by opera director Jens-Daniel Herzog and conducted by Jan Croonenbroeck.
Plot
The opera is set in Palermo in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Sicilian Mafia fights out its power struggles openly and violently in the streets. At its centre are the investigating magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who refuse to accept the rule of violence and corruption and pursue the Cosa Nostra, knowing that they are putting their lives at stake. Other characters include Falcone's wife, the judge Francesca Morvillo, the bodyguard Vito Schifani and his wife Rosaria, the witnesses Tommaso Buscetta and Rita Atria, the Mafia boss Michele Greco and the voice of the politician Giulio Andreotti.
Cultural significance
The opera draws on real events: in the 1980s Falcone and Borsellino prepared the Maxi Trial against hundreds of Mafiosi, relying in part on the testimony of the Mafia turncoat Tommaso Buscetta, and both were murdered in bomb attacks in 1992, Falcone on 23 May near Capaci and Borsellino on 19 July in Palermo. In Italy both are regarded as symbols of the fight against organised crime. As the world premiere is still to come, no reviews are available yet.