Berlin ∙ Milan ∙ Gütersloh
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) celebrated his greatest successes with La Bohème, Tosca, Madame Butterfly, and Turandot. To mark the centenary of his death, Bertelsmann presented the multimedia exhibition OPERA MEETS NEW MEDIA – Puccini, Ricordi and the Rise of the Modern Entertainment Industry. The exhibition highlighting the interplay of opera and media in the early 20th century, was first shown in Berlin in 2024, then at Milan’s Museo Teatrale alla Scala. Most recently, it was presented in Gütersloh. So far, approximately 70,000 people have visited the exhibition.
Giacomo Puccini conquered the whole world with his music. His operas have been among the world’s most frequently performed works for over 100 years without interruption. The timeless, emotional Puccini sound continues to inspire and touch people to this day.
Puccini celebrated his greatest successes at a time of revolutionary media innovations. The development of new entertainment technology, first and foremost film and sound recordings, which soon became widespread, represented a revolution for society and musical culture in the early 20th century, and fundamentally challenged the traditional business model of musical theater. It multiplied the distribution of dramatic music and popularized it to an unprecedented extent within just a few years.
The OPERA MEETS NEW MEDIA – Puccini, Ricordi and the Rise of the Modern Entertainment Industry exhibition seeks to track down the secret of this unprecedented success. It tells of the disruptive forces of new media and their impact; of how the artist Puccini and his publisher Ricordi used these times of upheaval to build an international star with the help of modern marketing campaigns; but also of how fundamentally contemporary developments changed the opera business forever.
The exhibition itself is designed as a media production and presents the highly topical subject in several audiovisual installations, from a 3D model of a Puccini portrait to AI animation of period stage sets. Numerous original documents from the Archivio Storico Ricordi, which belongs to Bertelsmann, will also be on display. The accompanying publication “Opera meets New Media,” edited by chief curator Gabriele Dotto, is available in bookstores.
Puccini exhibition at Theater Gütersloh has attracted nearly 10,000 visitors to date. “Opera Meets New Media” remains open in the theater foyer until January 4, 2026. Exhibition is open Thursdays through Sundays from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., and on performance days one hour before regular admission.
The global corporation celebrates with its hometown, organizes several events and campaigns to mark “200 years of municipal incorporation” // €25,000 donated to Gütersloh education fund // Thomas Rabe: “We are very happy to make our social and cultural contribution to our home location
60,000 people came to see the multimedia exhibition at the Museo Teatrale alla Scala. // Thomas Rabe: “We are delighted with the great interest in the cultural heritage of the Ricordi Archive, which belongs to Bertelsmann."
“Opera Meets New Media” features original documents from the Archivio Storico Ricordi and an artist’s AI animation // Thomas Rabe: “The exhibition contributes to the ongoing discourse about new media and their disruptive influence on business, culture and society.” // The exhibition can be seen daily from April 18 to May 16 at Bertelsmann Unter den Linden in Berlin
“Opera Meets New Media – Puccini, Ricordi, and the Rise of the Modern Entertainment Industry” on the interaction between opera and media in the 20th century // Original documents from Bertelsmann-owned Archivio Storico Ricordi travel to Germany for the first time // Thomas Rabe: “An exhibition about how technological innovations disrupt conventional art forms and create new ones.” // The exhibition can be seen daily at Bertelsmann Unter den Linden 1 from April 18 to May 16
The Archivio Storico Ricordi in Milan houses one of the world’s most important collections of Puccini manuscripts. This archive contains not only most of the opera scores by the most famous Italian opera composer after Verdi, but also several hundred letters, hundreds of libretti, dozens of photographs, and more than 700 sketches of costumes and stage sets from early opera performances.
This unique collection – in addition to its Puccini collection, the Archivio also holds extensive documents on Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini and Giuseppe Verdi – is part of the legacy of the music publisher Casa Ricordi.
Founded by Giovanni Ricordi in Milan in 1808, Casa Ricordi shaped the history of music in Italy and Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries like no other publisher. Its publishing activities, meticulously documented from the very beginning, reflect a unique symbiosis of entrepreneurship and creativity, and form the content basis of the collection, which comprises at least 200,000 documents in total.
The Archivio Storico Ricordi was taken over by Bertelsmann with its acquisition of Casa Ricordi in 1994 and remained with the international media, services, and education company even after the resale of the then music rights division in 2006. It has since been made accessible to research and academe, but above all to the public. Thanks to numerous collaborations, exhibitions, and digitization projects, its extraordinarily dense holdings are now also known to a broad international audience.
As national cultural heritage, the Archivio Storico Ricordi is protected by cultural legislation and as such under the tutelage of the Ministry of Culture.
Bertelsmann is aware of the great responsibility that comes with owning this valuable cultural asset and continues to cherish and cultivate the tradition associated with the Ricordi name.
