Giancarlo Cauteruccio

Bella is the host of a popular television program about plastic surgery. Her husband René is a surgeon who performs operations on guests during the same show. Then Bella is fired, due to a drop in the ratings. She storms out of the TV studio and has a terrible car accident on the way home, leaving her disfigured. Yet what might well seem to be the coup de grace for Bella’s career turns out to be the perfect occasion to relaunch her own image...

The opera *The Fundamental Laws of Human Stupidity*, commissioned by the 82nd Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Festival and staged at the Teatro Goldoni in Florence, is a musical work by Vittorio Montalti, directed by Giancarlo Cauteruccio. Inspired by Carlo M. Cipolla’s famous essay, the opera explores human irrationality in a tragicomic and abstract manner, highlighting how stupidity is a pervasive and harmful threat to society.