Orchestra Filarmonica Italiana

The Orchestra Filarmonica Italiana works as a musicians' cooperative, drawing on a network of more than 200 professional players to assemble forces suited to different productions. Its activity encompasses symphonic concerts, opera and ballet in Italian theatres and international engagements. Its repertoire includes major works by Verdi, Mozart, Rossini and Bizet, and it has collaborated with singers including Raina Kabaivanska, Ghena Dimitrova, José Carreras and Renato Bruson. Conductors associated with its performances include Nello Santi, Marcello Viotti and Yuri Ahronovitch. Pavia's Teatro Fraschini, an eighteenth-century horseshoe house named after the tenor Verdi trusted with some of his most demanding roles, runs an autumn series called Preludi d'autunno. This orchestra appears within it, bringing symphonic programmes to a theatre whose proportions were designed for opera and which repays players who can fill it without forcing.