Davide Livermore

Born in Turin, Davide Livermore, current director of Teatro Nazionale in Genoa, is the only director in the world to have opened the season at La Scala four times in a row, from 2018 to 2022.

Student of Carlo Majer, he is a staunch supporter of public theater and the social promotion of culture. He has held every role in the theater world: he has been an actor, teacher, screenwriter, choreographer, set designer, costume designer, director of photography, as well as performing as a singer in the world's most important theaters. He has collaborated with artists such as Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, José Carreras, Zubin Mehta, Mirella Freni, Luca Ronconi, Andrej Tarkovskij, Zhang Yimou, Riccardo Chailly, and Fabio Biondi. Active as an opera and theater director since 1998, he has staged shows in the world's most important theaters, from the United States to South America, Australia, Japan, Oman, and Russia, as well as, of course, in major Italian and European theaters and festivals. He was the artistic director of the Teatro Baretti in Turin for many years.

In 2013, he was appointed Artistic Director of the Centre de Perfeccionament Plàcido Domingo at the Palau de Les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, where he became Intendant in January 2015. At the Palau, his production of La Forza del Destino conducted by Zubin Mehta won the 2015 Campoamor Award for best show of the year. His production of I Vespri Siciliani at the Teatro Regio in Turin, which inaugurated the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy, was included in the Top Ten Musical Events of 2011 by the New York Times magazine Musical America. He also won the ‘Prix de la Critique de I'Europe Francophone’ by opening the 2017/18 season of the Opéra de Montecarlo with Adriana Lecouvreur. In 2017, he directed Tamerlano, his first production for La Scala, followed by Don Pasquale conducted by Riccardo Chailly. He then opened La Scala for four consecutive seasons, with Attila in 2018; Tosca in 2019 (achieving record ratings for an opera broadcast on television); the television event ...A riveder le stelle in 2020; and finally, Macbeth. In 2024, he worked for the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, for La Scala with the centenary production of Turandot, and opened the season at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen.

Between 2019 and 2022, we also recall the successful collaboration with the National Institute of Ancient Drama, with productions at the Greek Theatre Festival in Syracuse of Euripides' Elena - which broke all records for both attendance and box office takings in the history of the festival - and Aeschylus' Oreste, in co-production with the National Theatre of Genoa. In 2023, he was awarded the Eschilo d'oro. He was appointed director of the National Theater of Genoa in January 2020. Here he has launched numerous projects, including TIR — Teatro in Rivoluzione (Theatre in Revolution), bringing theatre to the squares of Liguria thanks to a truck that was transformed into a stage, and the performance exhibition Edipo lo contagio (Oedipus the Contagion), which drew a parallel between the plague of classical Thebes and society disrupted by the pandemic. The G8 Project, which gave rise to nine shows commissioned from nine internationally renowned playwrights on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the G8 in Genoa, received a Special Mention from the National Association of Theater Critics. In 2022, he opened the season at the Teatro Nazionale di Genova directing Friedrich Schiller's Maria Stuarda, a show that was also hugely successful during its long tour in the following months. At the beginning of 2024, he brought Paolo Villaggio's famous accountant to the theater in the show Fantozzi. Una tragedia.

The 2024/25 season of the Teatro Nazionale di Genova opens with an extraordinary joint inauguration with the Teatro dell'Opera Carlo Felice: Davide Livermore stages The Turn of the Screw, Henry James' famous ghost story, directing both the prose version and Benjamin Britten's opera, The Turn of the Screw. Also in 2024, together with Paolo Gep Cucco, he wrote and directed the film The Opera! - Arie per un'eclissi, a musical opera that tells the love story of Orpheus and Eurydice in contemporary times, combining pop, fashion, and visual arts in a visionary and phantasmagorical kaleidoscope. The film was presented in the Special Screening section at the 19th edition of the Rome Film Festival. In April 2025, for the 80th anniversary of the Liberation from Nazi-Fascism, he conceived the special project D'oro Il sesto senso partigiano (The Sixth Sense of the Partisans), which culminated on April 25 with a show directed by Giorgina Pi, in the presence of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella. He worked for Televisione della Svizzera Italiana as a director, screenwriter, and actor in W Verdi, Giuseppe, and the series Livermore sciò, for which he was nominated for the Prix de la Rose d'Or in Montreux. Until 2019, he was artistic director of Prodea Group, a company that organizes major international events.

For Balich Worldwide Shows, he directed the FIFA Awards ceremony, an event watched by over 700 million people worldwide. Together with Paolo Gep Cucco, in 2021 he created the campaign promoted by the Ministry of Culture for the reopening of theaters after the pandemic. For the innovative Kairos and Monolite coffee machines, designed for Rhea Vendors Group, he received the Brand Innovation Key Award 2020 and the Good Design Award 2022 (together with photographer Simona Ghizzoni). In 2016, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the Star of Italy by the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella. In 2024, the Rector of the University of Turin, Prof. Stefano Geuna, awarded him an honorary degree in Cinema, Performing Arts, Music, and Media for the “richness and interdisciplinarity that characterize his artistic research in the fields of theater and opera, the languages of cinema, and digital experimentation.”