COMPAGNIA FINZI PASCA

Biography

“Our language has always balanced the desire to tell moving — sometimes tragic — stories while preserving the audience’s sense of wonder, reaching them through surprising technical solutions that have made our artistic language internationally recognized.”

The distinctive poetics of the Compagnia Finzi Pasca are rooted in the concepts of the Theatre of Caress and the Invisible Gesture.
Developed over more than forty years of artistic experience, these concepts have shaped a unique aesthetic and a highly personal creative style, as well as a philosophy of training for actors, acrobats, musicians, dancers, and technicians — a particular way of inhabiting space.
Theatre, dance, acrobatics, circus arts, opera, and documentary creation all converge within the work of the company.
Compagnia Finzi Pasca was founded in 2011 by Antonio Vergamini, Daniele Finzi Pasca, Hugo Gargiulo, Julie Hamelin Finzi (†), and Maria Bonzanigo, continuing the artistic legacy developed through Teatro Sunil and Inlevitas. Based in Lugano, Switzerland, it is today considered one of the world’s leading independent performing arts companies.
Throughout its history, the company has created and produced more than forty productions. Its creative team has also directed:
three Olympic ceremonies (Turin 2006 and Sochi 2014 for the Olympic and Paralympic Games), two productions for Cirque du Soleil: Corteo (2005), seen by over 10.4 million spectators during 19 years of touring, and Luzia (2016), and nine operas, including Aida and Requiem by Verdi, now part of the official repertoire of the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg.

Other major productions include:
Carmen and Pagliacci at the Teatro di San Carlo,
L’Amour de loin for the English National Opera,
Einstein on the Beach at the Grand Théâtre de Genève (2019),
Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Hamburg Opera House (2021),
María de Buenos Aires at the Grand Théâtre de Genève (2023),
and Zarqa Al Yamama at the King Fahad Cultural Centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2024).

Among the company’s major large-scale events:
Montréal Avudo (2017), a multimedia spectacle commissioned by the city of Montréal combining video mapping, lights, and water fountains, viewed by 249,000 spectators in four months;
Abrazos (2019), created for the Feria Estatal de León in Mexico and attended by more than 200,000 people;
and participation in the legendary Fête des Vignerons in Vevey, Switzerland, seen by approximately 375,000 spectators.

In 2020, the company created the staging for the inauguration of the largest organ in Russia at the Zaryadye Concert Hall in Moscow.
In 2024, the creative team designed The Sense Gallery, a multisensory immersive installation space at FoxTown Factory Stores in Mendrisio.
Currently, six productions by the company are touring internationally:
Prima Facie (2025)
Titizé – A Venetian Dream (2024)
52 (2021)
Luna Park – Come un giro di giostra (2020)
Bianco su Bianco (2014)
Icaro (1991)

Additional international projects are currently in development.