Francesca Dego and Diego Ceretta Open the Orchestra della Toscana’s New Season
There’s a moment every fall when Florence starts playing again. On Thursday, October 22, at 9:00 p.m., that moment has a name and a face: Diego Ceretta, principal conductor of the Orchestra della Toscana, steps onto the podium at Teatro Verdi to open the new symphony season, the forty-sixth in the orchestra’s history.
A conductor who grew up fast
Born in Milan in 1996, Ceretta has followed an unusual path: he earned his diploma in violin at eighteen and in conducting at twenty-one, both with top marks, and became principal conductor of the ORT while still very young. Today he begins his second term at the helm of the Florentine orchestra, in front of an audience that has come to know and appreciate him over the past few years. The new season puts fourteen programs in front of him, a musical journey between memory and the contemporary that also includes the completion of his Brahms cycle.
Francesca Dego, the soloist of the evening
At his side is Francesca Dego, one of the most admired Italian violinists on the international scene. Ceretta and Dego are no strangers to working together: in October 2024 they shared the stage in Milan, at the Auditorium in Largo Mahler, with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano. Now they meet the Florentine audience again, for an evening built on contrasts and points of connection.
The program: from the present to high Romanticism
The first half opens with a first for Italy: Io cammino muovendo le dita (“I Walk by Moving My Fingers”), a piece for solo violin (2025) by Nicola Campogrande, one of the most frequently performed composers on today’s contemporary scene, in its Italian premiere. After this new work comes one of the cornerstones of the repertoire: the Violin Concerto, Op. 77 by Johannes Brahms, among the most significant works of the Romantic violin repertoire. Setting a freshly written score beside the great nineteenth-century concerto gives the first half a broad, many-sided profile.
After the intermission comes the Symphony No. 6, Op. 74, “Pathétique” by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It is the Russian composer’s last symphony, marked by a powerful expressive intensity and orchestral writing of great dramatic tension: a finale that stays with you even after the lights come back up.
Three dates, three cities
The season opener doesn’t stop in Florence. After the first night at Teatro Verdi, the program goes on the road: on Friday, October 23, the orchestra will be in Ferrara, and on Saturday, October 24, in Milan. Good news for anyone who lives outside Florence, and also a way to hear how the same concert changes from one hall to another, in front of different audiences.
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