About the work
"Venere e Adone" is the fifteenth opera by the Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino, written in 2020 to a libretto by Fabio Casadei Turroni and the composer himself. It was premiered on 28 May 2023 at the Hamburg State Opera, which had commissioned the work. From 26 June to 1 July 2026 the Teatro La Fenice in Venice presents the Italian premiere – directed by Georges Delnon and conducted by Kent Nagano. Sciarrino, one of the most influential composers of our time, is renowned for an extremely quiet musical language shaped by silence and the most delicate sonic events.
Plot
The libretto's principal source is the verse epic "L'Adone" (1623) by Giovan Battista Marino, which retells the ancient myth of Venus and Adonis. Marino – and, following him, the opera – gives particular prominence to the boar, a creature termed "the monster" (Il Mostro) that kills Adonis. The opera revolves around the relationship between death and love, setting them up almost as rivals and asking which is ultimately the more powerful. In Sciarrino's setting the myth becomes a meditation on desire, transience and dissolution, carried by a sound-world of breath, shimmer and sudden flares of light.
Cultural significance
Salvatore Sciarrino is regarded as one of the most important living opera composers; his music theatre has renewed the genre with an unmistakable aesthetic of silence and hyper-sensitive sound. "Venere e Adone" takes its place in a long line of highly individual operas, combining an engagement with Marino's Baroque epic with Sciarrino's characteristic reduction. The 2023 Hamburg world premiere and the 2026 Venetian premiere at Teatro La Fenice under Kent Nagano underline the work's international standing and the sustained interest of major houses in Sciarrino's output.