Don Giovanni with Simone Toni and Enzo Paci at Teatro Sala Umberto, February 2 to 14, 2027

Molière's Don Giovanni, with Simone Toni, Enzo Paci, Federica Castellini, Giorgia Coco and Francesca Osso and directed by Carlo Sciaccaluga, plays at Teatro Sala Umberto, at Via della Mercede 50 (00187 Rome), from February 2 to 14, 2027, for 11 performances: evening shows at 20:30, Saturday and Sunday matinees at 16:00, with one performance at 19:30 on Wednesday, February 10 and rest on Monday the 8th and Tuesday the 9th. The show is a production of the Teatro Nazionale di Genova with Gli Incauti and runs two and a quarter hours with an intermission. The Sala Umberto is in the Colonna district, between the Trevi Fountain and Piazza di Spagna, and is reached on foot from the Spagna and Barberini stops of Metro Line A. The prices published by the theater are €34 in Poltronissima, €28 in Poltrona A and balcony A, €22 in Poltrona B and balcony B. Tickets are bought on the official Sala Umberto website, from the purchase button on the show page, or at the box office on Via della Mercede.

Language: performed in Italian. No English version or English surtitles are announced.

Don Giovanni at the Sala Umberto: dates, times and tickets

Don Giovanni plays at the Sala Umberto from February 2 to 14, 2027, with 11 performances in two weeks and different times among evening shows, weekend matinees and one early performance.

The first week

Tuesday the 2nd, Wednesday the 3rd, Thursday the 4th and Friday, February 5 at 20:30. Saturday the 6th and Sunday the 7th at 16:00. On Monday the 8th and Tuesday the 9th there are no performances.

The second week

Wednesday, February 10 at 19:30, Thursday the 11th and Friday the 12th at 20:30, Saturday the 13th and the last performance Sunday, February 14 at 16:00. Note: the Wednesday the 10th performance starts an hour earlier than the other evening shows.

Prices

The Sala Umberto publishes five sections: Poltronissima €34, Poltrona A €28, Poltrona B €22, balcony A €28, balcony B €22. These are full prices. For discounts and subscriptions the reference is the theater box office, which also accepts the teacher card.

Running time

The show runs two hours and 15 minutes, intermission included. With a 20:30 start you come out around 22:45. With the 16:00 matinees you are out shortly after 18:00, in time for an aperitivo in the center.

Molière's Don Giovanni: the plot

Don Giovanni has abducted and married Donna Elvira, tearing her from the convent, only to abandon her. From there begins the sequence of encounters, seductions and challenges that will bring him before the statue of the Commendatore.

The flight

The Sala Umberto synopsis follows Don Giovanni wandering through Sicily with his servant Sganarello, courting two peasant girls by promising marriage to both and clashing with Elvira's brothers, who have come to avenge their sister's honor. He saves the life of one of them, Don Carlo, and so complicates the revenge.

The poor man and the statue

He meets a poor man whom he asks to blaspheme in exchange for money. He stumbles on the tomb of the Commendatore, whom he had killed some time before, and invites the statue to dinner. The statue nods.

Hypocrisy

After humiliating his creditor, enduring the sermon of his father Don Luigi and seeing again a repentant Elvira who begs him, Don Giovanni chooses hypocrisy as a survival strategy. But it is not enough: the statue of the Commendatore comes for him, grips his hand and drags him into the abyss. All Sganarello is left with is his lost wages.

Carlo Sciaccaluga's direction: a volcano and three actresses

Carlo Sciaccaluga sets his Don Giovanni on the slopes of a volcano and entrusts to three actresses all the characters, female and male, who revolve around Don Giovanni and Sganarello.

The volcano

In the director's notes the volcano is a force that answers to no order, that destroys and creates without a plan, and that reveals the crust of the world as a thin surface over magma. Don Giovanni, Sicilian by tradition, inhabits this landscape the way lava inhabits the mountain: the living thing under the crust, which the social system tries to contain and which periodically erupts.

Three actresses for everyone

Federica Castellini, Giorgia Coco and Francesca Osso play all the characters who oppose the two protagonists or remain their victims: Elvira, the peasant girls, the brothers, the father, the poor man, the creditor. It is a choice that turns the world around Don Giovanni into a female chorus, and gives the comedy a contemporary mark.

A revolutionary of thought

Sciaccaluga describes his Don Giovanni as a revolutionary of critical thinking, an aristocratic anarchist who questions the order of society, a slightly perverse teacher who teaches freedom to his servant Sganarello, who cannot afford it because freedom, in his words, is the prerogative of the rich.

The pair

At the center is the inseparable pair of master and servant, the intellectual and the illiterate. In the director's notes it is hard to establish which of the two has a moral primacy over the other: together they ask the fundamental questions, who we are, where we are going, where we come from.

Sets and costumes by students

A credits detail deserves attention: sets and costumes are by students of the Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti, Arianna Roveri, Siria Siri and Olimpia Cecilia Tonini, with Matilde Grillo, Andrea Parodi, Virginia Serino and Giulia Servili. Lighting is by Aldo Mantovani, the assistant director is Leonardo Nicolini. A national theater production that entrusts the show's look to an art school is a rare choice, and says much about the idea of theater as a laboratory that runs through this staging.

Edoardo Sanguineti's translation

The show starts from Edoardo Sanguineti's translation, poet and translator, on which Carlo Sciaccaluga builds his reading of the text.

A tragic comedy

The theater's presentation defines the text a tragicomedy, in which Don Giovanni is not a Don Juan in the usual sense. He sets off a game of fascination and abandonment, but the meaning of his actions seems dictated by an irrepressible critique of the way humanity sees itself, above all in relation to God.

The unconscious

Sciaccaluga is convinced that Molière offers an extraordinary depiction of the unconscious, because in each of us, he argues, there really is a Don Giovanni, with his dream of freedom.

The character who tests you

In the director's notes Don Giovanni is the character everyone deserves to meet in order to test themselves. Confronting him means losing your convictions, or becoming even more rooted in them.

Molière's comedy: history and scandal

Don Giovanni, or The Stone Guest, is a comedy in five acts by Molière, first performed at the Palais-Royal in Paris on February 15, 1665 by the company under the protection of Louis XIV's brother.

Spanish origins

The character was born in Spain. The friar Gabriel Téllez, under the pseudonym Tirso de Molina, wrote The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest, published in 1630, as a warning to every transgressor of morality and divine law. Molière's Don Giovanni, unlike the Spanish and Italian ones, is in prose.

The scandal

The comedy caused a great scandal in church circles, for which it was an unacceptable defense of libertinism. Sganarello also irritated, a superstitious and irreverent servant, above all for the final line in which, faced with his master's punishment, he demands only his pay.

Cuts and rewrites

The text was published with cuts in 1682 and restored in Amsterdam in 1683. At the request of Molière's widow, Thomas Corneille made a verse adaptation of it, which remained the text used on stage until the mid-19th century.

Heaven

One of the recurring themes is Heaven as an external force to be feared, a judge who cannot be mocked and who, after granting many chances at redemption, punishes those who turn their backs on him. An idea of God that sources link more to ancient Greek theater than to the Catholic tradition.

Simone Toni, Enzo Paci and the three actresses

The two names at the top of the bill are Simone Toni and Enzo Paci, actors with theater training and very different careers. With them are Federica Castellini, Giorgia Coco and Francesca Osso.

Simone Toni

Born in Forlimpopoli in 1980, Simone Toni trained at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano school, where he was admitted in 1999 and graduated in 2002 after winning a scholarship as best student. He worked at length with Luca Ronconi, as actor and assistant director, up to the master's last show, Lehman Trilogy. He has acted for Gigi Proietti, Peter Stein, Gianfranco de Bosio, Gabriele Lavia and Romeo Castellucci, with whom he took Julius Caesar to Russia, Mexico, France, Belgium and Spain.

Toni as director and founder of Gli Incauti

In 2008 Toni founded the free theater association Gli Incauti, of which he is artistic director. It is the company that co-produces this Don Giovanni. As a director he has signed, among others, Orwell's 1984, Juan Mayorga's Hamelin, Henry Naylor's The Angel of Kobane and Wael Qadour's The Confession. In 2020 he received the Ivo Chiesa international prize in the Future of Theater section.

Enzo Paci

Vincenzo Paci, known as Enzo, was born in Genoa in 1973. He graduated in 2000 from the acting school of the Teatro Stabile di Genova, then alternated theater and television comedy: Colorado from 2007, Zelig between 2009 and 2013, the character of the grumpy Genoese Mattia Passadore in Central Station. Since 2021 he has been Commissioner Mauro Bacigalupo in the series Blanca. In 2024 he played Paolo Villaggio in Luca Manfredi's TV film Com'è umano lui!

The actresses

Federica Castellini has already worked with Simone Toni. In 2024 she wrote with him and with Ippolita Baldini and Francesca Porrini the comedy V'Angelo, a feminine rewriting of the sacred texts that also played in Rome. Giorgia Coco and Francesca Osso complete the trio that gives voice to all the other characters.

A Genoese and Romagnol cast

The production was born in Genoa, where Enzo Paci trained and where Carlo Sciaccaluga was born. It meets Gli Incauti, the company founded by Simone Toni, a Romagnol from Forlimpopoli trained in Milan. It is a meeting of different theater traditions finding each other on a French text set in Sicily.

Who Carlo Sciaccaluga is

Carlo Sciaccaluga is a Genoese director, actor and translator, born in 1987, son of director Marco Sciaccaluga and set designer Valeria Manari.

His training

He trained in the field between Austria, Germany and Italy. He debuted in 2009 as a German-language actor with Matthias Langhoff at the Landestheater in Linz, and worked as an assistant at the Berliner Ensemble and as assistant director to Gabriele Lavia, Davide Livermore and Franco Branciaroli.

The productions

He has directed shows for the Teatro Nazionale di Genova, the Teatro Stabile di Napoli, the Stabile di Catania, the Teatro di Roma and the Biondo in Palermo, and in Kazakhstan. With Livermore he signed Il trovatore at the Sydney Opera House and at Teatro Regio in Parma. In 2025 his Equus by Peter Shaffer earned him a nomination as best director for the Premio Le Maschere del Teatro Italiano. In Italy that play had first been staged by his father, in 1975.

Molière and Schiller

Before Don Giovanni he had already taken on Molière with Tartuffe, in 2021. As a translator he has a close tie to the theater of Martin McDonagh and, among the classics, to Schiller. In 2021 he translated and directed Fiesco's Conspiracy in Genoa in Piazza San Lorenzo, with Simone Toni as the lead.

A curiosity about Don Giovanni with Simone Toni and Enzo Paci at Teatro Sala Umberto, February 2 to 14, 2027

The curiosity is a web of earlier meetings. Carlo Sciaccaluga debuted very young as a director with an adaptation from Murakami, After the Quake, and among the leads was Enzo Paci. In 2021 Sciaccaluga directed Simone Toni in Fiesco's Conspiracy, in a packed Piazza San Lorenzo, with a walkway that carried the show from the cathedral steps to the palaces opposite. And the year before, Toni had received the Ivo Chiesa prize from a jury chaired by Marco Sciaccaluga, the director's father. The Genoa Don Giovanni therefore brings together a director and two actors who have known each other for years.

Then there is a television detail. In the series Blanca, on Rai 1, Enzo Paci has played Commissioner Bacigalupo since 2021. In the same series, in 2023, Carlo Sciaccaluga played the police officer Ivan Scarabotti. Director and actor have therefore also crossed paths in front of the camera.

And a repertory detail: in Enzo Paci's list of shows, in 2000, there is already a Molière Don Giovanni, in the years of his training at the Teatro Stabile di Genova. 27 years later he returns to the same text, with a stage and television experience he could not have had then.

Sala Umberto, the theater on Via della Mercede

The Teatro Sala Umberto has 485 seats in a rectangular hall with a sloping orchestra and a balcony, born in 1882 on the ground floor of a building on Via della Mercede, it has been artistically directed by Alessandro Longobardi since 2002.

From 1882 to variety

The hall was commissioned by Andrea Busiri Vici and decorated by Alessandro Bazzani, for concerts, operettas and comedies. In 1890 Giulio Podesti enlarged it to 650 seats. In 1913 it became a cinema. In 1928 the Marino brothers, already owners of the Salone Margherita, returned it to variety and gave it the king's name.

From cinema to drama

Around 1930 cinema returned. In 1981 the hall reopened as a theater with the Ente teatrale italiano, in 1991 it went back to cinema, and since 2002 it has been steadily a theater, with drama, comedy, music and shows for kids.

Great authors

In the theater's program Don Giovanni belongs to the section devoted to great authors, alongside the one for new playwriting. The hall's compact size is an advantage for a classic performed by five actors: the voices reach the balcony without effort.

One thing nobody tells you about Don Giovanni with Simone Toni and Enzo Paci at Teatro Sala Umberto, February 2 to 14, 2027

One thing rarely said about Don Giovanni is that Molière doesn't call him a Don Juan. The Sala Umberto's presentation underlines it: the protagonist sets off a game of fascination and abandonment, but what drives him is critique, curiosity, the desire to investigate even the invisible. Those who go to the theater expecting a seducer out of a light comedy will find a more restless character, and in Sciaccaluga's reading even a revolutionary.

The second thing concerns Sganarello. He is the character the audience often remembers most, and who in the 17th century irritated church circles almost as much as his master: a superstitious and irreverent servant who, at the end, faced with his master's death, thinks only of his pay. The Sala Umberto synopsis closes with precisely him, with the lost wages: a finale both comic and very bitter.

The third thing concerns the date. Molière debuted Don Giovanni on February 15, 1665. The last Roman performance of this production is Sunday, February 14, 2027, the eve, 362 years later, of the Palais-Royal debut.

The advice I give you for visiting Don Giovanni with Simone Toni and Enzo Paci at Teatro Sala Umberto, February 2 to 14, 2027

The advice is to choose the performance by looking at the time, not just the date. The 16:00 matinees, Saturday and Sunday, are the most convenient for those coming from outside Rome or bringing teenagers who study Molière. The Wednesday the 10th 19:30 performance is right for those coming from work who don't want to get home too late. The 20:30 evening shows are for those who want a post-theater dinner.

The second piece of advice concerns the seat. In a hall of 485 seats the differences in visibility are small, and Poltrona B or balcony B, at €22, offer an excellent ratio of price to view. Those who want to catch the work of the three actresses, who change characters constantly, benefit from the first rows of the Poltronissima.

Finally, the reading. You don't need to know Molière to follow the show, but it helps to know the text is a comedy that ends in hell. The official synopsis says it bluntly. In our view it is precisely this passage from laughter to the abyss that makes Don Giovanni a classic that still speaks.

How to get to Sala Umberto

The Sala Umberto is inside the historic center's ZTL (limited traffic zone): you get there by metro line A, getting off at Spagna or Barberini and continuing on foot for about 10 minutes.

From Spagna or from Barberini

From Spagna you cross the piazza and take Via di Propaganda toward Sant'Andrea delle Fratte. From Barberini you go down Via del Tritone and bend right toward Via della Mercede.

By bus

Many surface lines run along Via del Tritone and Via del Corso. For the exact route it is best to use the ATAC route planner.

By car and taxi

The car must be left outside the ZTL. On leaving the evening shows a taxi is the most comfortable solution. Piazza San Silvestro is an easy point to give.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely mentioned

It is well known that Don Giovanni is a Spanish myth. Much less often cited is that Molière's text, as we read and stage it today, was not performed for almost two centuries. At the request of Molière's widow, Thomas Corneille made a verse adaptation, and it was that version, not Molière's prose, that stayed on stage until the mid-19th century. The original text had been published with cuts in 1682 and restored only in the 1683 Amsterdam edition.

It is also well known that the Don Giovanni myth has inspired many operas. Less often remembered is that in Molière's case the choice of prose was an exception: the Spanish and Italian Don Giovannis were in verse. Molière's prose is what makes the comedy so modern and so suited to translations, like Edoardo Sanguineti's used in this staging.

Finally, a fact about the hall. Simone Toni is no newcomer to the Sala Umberto: in December 2022 he directed David Eldridge's Beginning there, with Giovanni Scifoni and Francesca Inaudi, running all month. He returns to Via della Mercede, this time as an actor, with the company he founded.

The right photo to take at Don Giovanni with Simone Toni and Enzo Paci at Teatro Sala Umberto, February 2 to 14, 2027

During the show you don't take photos, as theater rules and respect for the actors require. The right photo is taken at the entrance on Via della Mercede, with the Sala Umberto sign and the Don Giovanni poster: a discreet facade, squeezed between the buildings of the Colonna district, that doesn't announce the hall inside.

Before the start, if staff allow, a shot from the balcony toward the stage with the volcano set still in darkness tells the evening better than a close-up. At intermission, the crowded foyer is the image of the life of a center-city theater.

On the way out, a few minutes on foot, the lit Trevi Fountain or Piazza di Spagna are the natural frames to close the evening with a photo.

Around Sala Umberto: the Colonna district

Via della Mercede is in the Colonna district, between the Trevi Fountain and Piazza di Spagna, a stone's throw from Via del Corso.

The nearby churches

A few meters away is Piazza San Silvestro, with San Silvestro in Capite. A little farther up is Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, with Borromini's dome and bell tower and Bernini's angels.

Piazza Colonna and the Galleria

Along Via del Corso you reach Piazza Colonna, with the column of Marcus Aurelius and Palazzo Chigi, and the Galleria Alberto Sordi, useful on rainy evenings.

Teatro Quirino

10 minutes on foot is the Teatro Quirino, where in the same week, February 2 to 7, Rosso Malpelo with Enrico Guarneri plays: two classics in two nearby theaters.

Some important events that took place here in history

Sala Umberto was born in 1882, on the ground floor of a building on Via della Mercede, at the wish of Andrea Busiri Vici, with interiors decorated by Alessandro Bazzani: concerts, operettas, comedies. In 1890 the architect Giulio Podesti enlarged it to 650 seats, and perhaps in that period it was known as Sala della Piccola Borsa. In 1913 it became a cinema.

In 1928 the Marino brothers, owners of the Salone Margherita, brought it back to the stage with variety and named it after the king: Sala Umberto. For a couple of years comedians, chanteuses and showgirls performed here. Around 1930 cinema returned, and it would stay for half a century.

In 1981 the hall reopened as a theater after a renovation, under the direction of the Ente teatrale italiano and with a drama program. In 1991 it went back to cinema. Since 2002, under the artistic direction of Alessandro Longobardi, it has been a theater for good. A classic like Don Giovanni, with its comic servant and its finale in hell, brings back to Via della Mercede the mix of laughter and gloom that Italian-style theater has always known how to host.

Who has played Don Giovanni with Simone Toni and Enzo Paci at Teatro Sala Umberto, February 2 to 14, 2027

Through the Sala Umberto, between the wars, passed the variety artists hired by the Marino brothers: comedians, chanteuses, headliners. Since 2002 the hall has hosted mainly drama, comedy and music. In December 2022 Simone Toni directed Beginning there, with Giovanni Scifoni and Francesca Inaudi.

In the 2026-27 season passing through Via della Mercede are, among others, Francesco Montanari with Storia di un cinghiale, Giulio Corso and Federica De Benedittis with Cime Tempestose, Francesco De Gregori with his autumn concerts and, in January, Gianfranco Gallo with Captivo.

From February 2 to 14, 2027 passing through the Sala Umberto are Simone Toni, Enzo Paci, Federica Castellini, Giorgia Coco and Francesca Osso, with Carlo Sciaccaluga, lighting by Aldo Mantovani, sets and costumes by students of the Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti and assistant director Leonardo Nicolini. And passing through the text are Molière, Tirso de Molina and Edoardo Sanguineti, with Don Giovanni, Sganarello, Elvira and the statue of the Commendatore.

Where to eat before or after Don Giovanni

The Colonna district offers dining of every kind, it is wise to move a few streets away from the most touristy roads.

Trattorias

In the streets between Via della Mercede, Via del Pozzetto and Via della Vite there are Roman trattorias frequented at lunch by those working in the buildings of the area.

Before the matinee

For the 16:00 performances the bars and pizza-by-the-slice shops on Via del Tritone work well. After the Saturday or Sunday show, finished shortly after 18:00, there is time for an aperitivo in the center.

After the evening show

At the end of the performance, around 22:45, many kitchens in the center are still open. For a glass, the wine bars between Via del Corso and Piazza di Spagna.

Accessibility, recommended age and practical information

For Sala Umberto's accessibility for people with reduced mobility and for access to the balcony it is best to contact the theater box office, at 06 6794753, before buying.

With teenagers

Don Giovanni is a classic suited to high school students, especially those studying 17th-century theater or the Don Giovanni myth in literature and music. The running time of two and a quarter hours, with an intermission, is demanding for the youngest.

The teacher card

The Sala Umberto accepts the teacher card. For teachers who want to see the show before proposing it to their classes, it is a concrete opportunity.

Frequently asked questions about Don Giovanni at the Sala Umberto

When does Don Giovanni play at the Sala Umberto?

Molière's Don Giovanni plays at the Sala Umberto from February 2 to 14, 2027: evening shows at 20:30, Saturday and Sunday matinees at 16:00, Wednesday the 10th at 19:30. There are no performances on Monday the 8th and Tuesday the 9th.

How much do Don Giovanni tickets cost?

Tickets for Don Giovanni at the Sala Umberto cost €34 in Poltronissima, €28 in Poltrona A and balcony A, €22 in Poltrona B and balcony B, according to the full prices published by the theater.

Who acts in Don Giovanni?

In the Sala Umberto's Don Giovanni the actors are Simone Toni, Enzo Paci, Federica Castellini, Giorgia Coco and Francesca Osso. The three actresses play all the characters who revolve around Don Giovanni and Sganarello.

Who directs?

Don Giovanni at the Sala Umberto is directed by Carlo Sciaccaluga, a Genoese director born in 1987. The show is a production of the Teatro Nazionale di Genova with the company Gli Incauti, on Edoardo Sanguineti's translation.

How long is the show?

Don Giovanni at the Sala Umberto runs two hours and 15 minutes, intermission included, according to the theater's official page. The 20:30 evening shows therefore end around 22:45.

How do you get to the Sala Umberto?

The Sala Umberto, at Via della Mercede 50, is in the Colonna district, inside the ZTL. You get there on foot in about 10 minutes from the Spagna and Barberini stops of Metro Line A.

Where is this Don Giovanni set?

Carlo Sciaccaluga's Don Giovanni at the Sala Umberto is set on the slopes of a volcano, an image of a force that destroys and creates without a plan. Don Giovanni, Sicilian by tradition, inhabits that landscape the way lava inhabits the mountain.

The final advice on Don Giovanni at the Sala Umberto

A Molière classic in Sanguineti's translation, a Genoese director who has known his two leads for years, three actresses giving voice to the whole world around Don Giovanni, a volcano in place of picture-postcard Sicily. The advice is to choose the time with care, take a Poltronissima seat if you want to follow the play of character changes, and let the comedy carry you to its finale in hell. In our view, in an intimate hall like the Sala Umberto, it is one of the best ways to rediscover why Don Giovanni keeps testing those who watch him.

Article written by the editorial team of Tour Leader Pro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences.

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