Here's an overview of upcoming events at the LAC.
Lugano Arte e Cultura is preparing for a busy schedule, marking the transition from summer to the new season: in the coming months, the LAC will offer a mosaic of events ranging from musical theater to blues, to the great theatrical repertoire with two plays by Anton Chekhov. A program that reflects the center's vocation to combine different artistic languages, confirming its centrality in Ticino's cultural life.
From July 16 to 20, 2025, the Hall and Agora of the LAC will host the project Bestiario notturno. Ballad opera based on the poems of Francis Poulenc , a work that intertwines music and drama to reinterpret the French composer's universe. The performance, curated by conductor Martino Ruggero Dondi and director Lorenzo Ponte, marks a milestone in the journey that will lead to the opening of the opera season with La voix humaine and Cavalleria rusticana . The performance features young performers and soloists from the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana.
Alongside the musical theatre, the same period will see the return of the festival LAC en plein air with the second chapter of From Blues to BopFour concerts, organized in synergy with the Events and Congress Division of the City of Lugano, will bring on stage names such as Marco Mezquida with the Canova Chamber Orchestra, the trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso with the project Spiritual Blues, the Swiss saxophonist Christoph Grab with a tribute to Ray Charles and, finally, the Gospel Voices Family choir. All events are free to enter with reservations. su www.laclugano.ch.
Following the summer of music, the LAC opens its 2025/26 prose season at the end of September with Carmelo Rifici 's Dittico della Bufera . The director, the center's director of performing arts, returns to explore two foundational texts of his research: Three Sisters and Anton Chekhov's The Seagull . The first will be performed on September 30th, followed the next day by the second title. On October 4th and 5th, as part of the FIT Festival, the two plays will be presented as a theatrical marathon with English surtitles.
Rifici leads a large group of actors, including young people from the "Luca Ronconi" Theatre School at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, in a production that combines rigor and experimentation. The project opens up to new forms of theatrical pedagogy and a dialogue with contemporary times, with references to Russian literature and writers such as Anna Politkovskaya and Svetlana Aleksievič.
To complement the debut, LAC edu offers meetings and insights: a focus on Chekhov with philosopher Silvio Joller, a film festival featuring Marco Bellocchio's The Seagull , and a public dialogue between Rifici and playwright Angela Dematté.
