In his up to now  four operas, Luca Lombardi has centered upon philosophical and socio-critical issues, has refelcted upon the relation of artists to power and set to music a comedy pattern.

FAUST -  The libretto is based upon an unconventional adaptation of Goethe's drama into Italian and for Lombardi was related to the keyword "Faith and doubt.".Lombardi#s music combines, as well as the text does, serious with grotesque, refined with trivial, popular with artful.
DMITRI -  personalized through the relation between Dmitri Schostakowitsch und Josef Stalin, the work deals with the artist at the mercy of power and as - a corruptible - player himself, and reflects Lombardi's quite ambivalent questioning of his won music making. " If Musik can be true, that implies that music can also lie."
PROSPERO - is based on Shakespeare's "Storm". The libretto, Lombardi was the co-author of, combines parts of the original english dialogues by Skakespeare with their traduction into German, Italian and Neapolitanian. A 'comic' opera,  written from a disillusioned view of the world, the yet from tolerance and grace carried end of which becomes possible with the help of the magic of music (The flute of the magical spirit Ariel is one of the two instrumental solo parts) and is meant as a reminding statement in a world of fanatics and extremists."Music bans the evil and unites the lovers."
IL RE NUDO is based upon a theatre play of the Russian author Jewgeni Schwarz respectivle the tale upon "Des Kaisers neue Kleider (The emperors new clothes)". This two-act comic chamber opera deals with power, also an usurped one, and opportunism, not inly in politics, but in many different fields, including art and music "The king is naked...!!"

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The theme of OFER, Lombardi's new opera project, is linked with his Israeli citizenship in 2008, which lead him to a more intense reflection upon his second homeland.
The libretto is based upon the novel Eine Frau flieht vor einer Nachricht (* "A woman flees a message" no official English title yet) by the Israeli author David Grossmann, winner of the important  Man Int. Booker Prize 2017.  Against the background of the persisting and seemingly insolvable Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the book tells a love story, but also in flashbacks and flashforwards the destiny of different persons and traces in the same time the history of Israel since it's foundation in 1948. .
But, even though the book and the opera center upon Israel and his neighbours, the subjects in question are certainly not limited to this part of the world, but  apply also to other countries and other times, since they address universal questions of mankind.
Lombardi says upon the it's main topics: "OFER is the story of a great love told against the background of a great tragedy. I wrote the libretto myself - with the help and the approval of David Grossmann, the author of the novel upon which it is based. It tells upon Ora, upon her love for two childhood friends (one of them, Ilan, will later on bevome her husband), but before all, il tells upon the love for her son Ofer.
Ofer volunteers for a military operation in the Westbank. Ora gets panicked. She must fear, that after he safely came back home from his military service, he's now tempting fate  with his voluntary activity. Thus, this time, soldiers could come to her home in order to bring her the news of his death. She escapes into magical thinking: As long as she's not at home, the message cannot be brought: Ofer cannot be dead. Her escape will protect him. On her road to the North of the country, she takes along her other childhood friend Avram. And it becomes gradually clear, thet he is Ofer's natural father. Avram served as a soldier during the Six-Day-War and his soul and body were deeply marked from his captivity in Egypt, when he came back home.
The wandering, the "escape" is like a magical protection, but in the same time a travel of remembrance, talk therapy and narrative path... " 
With this project, Lombardi is entering a new ground under several aspects: after, for former libretti, he only worked as co-author, for OFER, he wrote for the first time the libretto himself in Italian language. Then, the libretto was re-translated into Hebrew  and it's now the first time, that sets to music a text in Hebrew language. 

                                                              






































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