Giulia Rossena

lorenzopuntoponte [at] gmail.com

I was born in Rome, raised between Palermo and Milan.

I graduated in Classics literature at the Catholic University of Milan thinking that I would be a literature professor. Then I started a course of theater and I decided to look for a different relationship with words. Therefore I went to study Theater Direction at the Paolo Grassi Civic School in Milan. Among the most precious meetings for my artistic and professional growth I count Mariano Furlani, Maurizio Schmidt, Carmelo Rifici, Marco Maccieri, Renata Molinari, Davide Carnevali, Giuliana Musso, and Claudio Autelli. From each of them I have stolen and I continue to steal. After my studies I started working as an assistant director at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan and at the Teatro Franco Parenti with Andrée Ruth Shammah. These were the years of my apprenticeship, in which I began to understand how a theater stage is made and who its inhabitants are.

I’ve directed prose theater and opera shows. Sometimes I feel the need to write the stories I tell myself, sometimes I work with the words of Others.

In 2018, together with Maddalena Massafra, Clio Sciro Saccà, Marco Sinopoli, we won the Macerata Opera Festival 4.0 competition for the writing and composition of a contemporary opera. In 2022, I received the 3rd prize of the EOP – European Opera Prize for Directors, together with Alice Benazzi and Giulia Rossena. In 2023, we won the 13th edition of the EOP – European Opera Award for Directors.

From that shame, impotence and pain, something was born that I believe was the desire to become a poet, that is, to be able to express what it means to feel regret for someone, to have been loved, to be alone.
Stig Dagerman

Alice Benazzi

Giulia Rossena

Emanuele Agliati

Rosabel Huguet Dueñas

Praxis

Lara Ilaria Braconi

Arbaro

Gli Asini

Martino Ruggero Dondi

Little Bear and the Ice Mountain Nocturnal Bestiary Two widows Idomeneo, re di Creta Once we won't be great Good for Nothing You Are Agatha Confabulazioni

Little Bear and the Ice Mountain

  • musical fairy tale in a prologue and four scenes
  • music by Giovanni Sollima
  • libretto by Giancarlo De Cataldo
  • musical director Julia Cruz
  • director Lorenzo Ponte
  • set design Alice Benazzi
  • choreography Livia Bartolucci
  • costumes Giulia Rossena
  • lighting Emanuele Agliati

  • Queen of the Ice: Irene Celle, Federica Livi

  • Little Bear: Luisa Bertoli, Solomía Antonyak
  • Little Bear: Gianluca Moro, Luis Arance Ortega
  • How-cool-am-I: Tamon Inoue, Andrea Visentin
  • Snow-Eater: Antonino Arcilesi, Nicola Ciancio
  • Little Robot-Almost-Jack-of-All-Trades: Ilaria Marchianò
  • Walrus / Penguin: Francesco Tomasi

  • photos Luca Del Pia and Roberto Moro

  • New commission by Fondazione Teatro La Fenice and AsLiCo in European co-production with Opéra Grand Avignon and Festival de Granada



When we conceived this show, we decided to portray the Ice Mountain not as a passive backdrop against which characters act, but as one of the protagonists of this story. The Mountain is alive, it suffers and rejoices, like everyone else, and its actions change the course of history. We therefore imagined it as a being that transforms, changes shape, grows and, unfortunately, shrinks in response to what is happening around it. At the beginning of the show, the Mountain appears covered in black spots, caused by polluting dust, which are like wounds on its skin. How would our way of life change if we considered the nature around us not as an object to be used, but as a living being with its own needs and desires, just like us humans? In our opinion, there is one key to rediscovering the life of nature: enchantment. If we can look at the world with imagination and wonder, then suddenly it will appear to us in all its dazzling beauty. To recreate the glacier on stage, we chose to work with a material very dear to our imagination: paper. It seemed perfect for playing with the infinite shapes that ice sculpts. Little Bear is a creature full of imagination who, in times of difficulty, shapes the ice, imagining a place where he can return to live in safety. What can enchantment do in the face of the suffering and injustice of the world? Perhaps everything! Stories are the tool that living beings have always used to learn how to live, love and even repair. The Ice Queen knows this well, passing down an ancient prophecy that the Mountain will be healed by a song. A song to rekindle hope, a story to fall in love with the life around us: this is our Little Bear and the Ice Mountain.
January 2026

Software Artisan: Federico Poni This website is built with plain HTML, CSS and plain JavaScript, but we use Swiper.JS library for the galleries An artisanal Python script is used to statically generate this website for ecological sake Fonts in use: Ortica and VG5000