Bio | marialuisabafunno.co

© Mariapia Ballarino

Marialuisa Bafunno is an Italian opera director known for her symbolic, interdisciplinary, and innovative approach. Her productions reinterpret traditional repertoire with a strong visual identity and a contemporary language.

She began her opera career in 2015 in the Stage Direction department at Teatro alla Scala, working with renowned names such as Mario Martone, Grisha Asagaroff, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Kasper Holten, Jürgen Flimm on productions including Turandot, Cavalleria / Pagliacci, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, L'elisir d'amore (staged at Malpensa Airport), The Turn of the Screw and Ti vedo, ti sento, mi perdo.

She made her opera directorial debut with Cavalleria Rusticana in September 2022 at the Teatro Fusco in Taranto, produced by the Orchestra della Magna Grecia, followed in 2023 by a site-specific production of La Sonnambula at the Piccolo Opera Festival.

In 2024, she won the OperaLombardia Directing Competition to stage La Bohème, which debuted at the Teatro Sociale of Como, Teatro Grande of Brescia, Teatro Ponchielli of Cremona, Teatro Fraschini of Pavia, and in 2025 at the Teatro Regio of Parma and the I Teatri di Reggio Emilia.

In parallel, she develops projects that blend the traditional operatic repertoire with new approaches to staging and audience participation, such as BohèmExperiment with the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, a workshop on L’Elisir d’amore created with inmates at the Opera prison, and a series of site-specific productions and operatic flash mobs in unconventional settings.

Her work has also been recognised with the 4th Prize at the XII European Opera-directing Prize (Opera Europa / Camerata Nuova) for an original concept of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, presented at the Royal Danish Opera.
She is frequently invited to serve on juries, including the Anna Pancirolli Prize for drama and the OperaLombardia opera competition.

Since 2022, she has regularly collaborated with director Leo Muscato as assistant and revival director both in Opera and Drama Theatre, working on productions such as Cecilia (Teatro Lirico in Cagliari), Il Xerse (Festival della Valle d’Itria), Manon Lescaut (Teatro Comunale in Bologna), Prometheus Bound and Miles Gloriosus (Teatro Greco di Siracusa), The Twelfth Night (Teatro Stabile in Turin) and The Inspector General (Teatro Stabile in Bolzano). She has directed revivals of La Cenerentola (Teatro Lirico di Cagliari) and Nabucco (Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens).

Over the years, she has collaborated as an assistant with directors such as Serena Sinigaglia, Francesco Micheli, Daniela Kerck, Renato Bonajuto, and Gioele Dix in prominent Italian and European theatres, including Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo, Teatro Coccia in Novara, Teatro Franco Parenti, Centro Teatrale Bresciano, Opéra national de Lorraine, Staatsteater Darmstadt and Staatsteater Wiesbaden.

She has served as Stage Manager for the Donizetti Opera Festival in Bergamo and as assistant Stage Manager for The New Generation Festival in Florence.

In addition to Opera, her work extends into the field of Performing Arts and hybrid formats. As a creator, set designer, and performer with CROSS Project, both in Italy and abroad, she explores site-specific and audience-centred experiences through performances that blur the lines between visual art, theatre and installation.

She has collaborated internationally with companies such as Carte Blanche (Denmark) on site-specific performances (Møder - I mørket, Arkivet, I Byens Gamle Hjerte) in partnership with artists from Teatro de Los Sentidos, and in Copenhagen with the award-winning group Sisters Hope on two editions of the immersive performance Inhabitation, in which the audience lives for several days in close contact with the performers in a potential future world.

She has also been the Assistant Artistic Director of the CROSS Festival - dedicated to dance and Performing Arts - and a core member of Kokoschka Revival, an artistic collective combining art, technology, and interactive storytelling (LARS, YOUFight!). She has collaborated with Campsirago Residenza on itinerant performances like Frida, staged within the Frida Kahlo exhibition at Mudec in Milan.