Little Bear and the Ice Mountain

Melting ice separates two young polar bears, Piccolo Orso and Piccola Orsa, in an Arctic where temperatures are rising. Piccolo is tricked by Mangianeve, who plans to turn their frozen home into an amusement park. Piccola is protected by the stern Regina dei Ghiacci. Can the siblings reunite and save their place in peril?

Piccolo Orso e la montagna di ghiaccio (Little Bear and the Ice Mountain) is a new opera for young audiences, commissioned by La Fenice and AsLiCo, with climate change and melting glaciers at its heart. The opera is part of Opera domani, AsLiCo's participatory project for children between the ages of 6 to 14, in which the young participants prepare through workshops, then join in during the performance with songs, choreography and props, singing as a chorus of penguins. The Mountain itself is a protagonist: a living presence that suffers and shrinks, its black marks evoking the carbon pollution that speeds up the melting of the glaciers. Mangianeve, who wants to turn the glacier into a tourist attraction, shows the terrible cost of exploiting nature, while other characters show that humans can help nature. The music is by Giovanni Sollima and the libretto by Giancarlo De Cataldo. Lorenzo Ponte, winner of the European Opera-directing Prize, directs. By combining art, science and participation, the opera turns an urgent environmental issue into a shared emotional experience.