Francesca began her professional career in 2004 as a Scheduler at Classica Italia (Beta Film Group), a channel broadcasted on the Italian Sky platform. The introduction of advertising to the channel in 2005 led to Francesca taking on the role of Programming Manager  – in this role responsibilities included managing the commercial schedule and coordinating the development of software to directly link the schedule with Sky’s IT systems.

 

The first important challenge for Francesca came in 2007, when she spearheaded the first live event of the channel: the inaugural opening of the theatre season at Teatro alla Scala. This was (and currently is) a national media event, with the channel gaining Freeview visibility across the Sky platform for the first time. The television event was a great success, and over the following years it was broadcast live.

One of her greatest success was in 2009 when the live of Carmen from Teatro alla Scala became the most viewed prime time programme on the Sky platform, with national newspapers calling the production of ‘Little Cinderella’ an excellent public service made by a private network.

Francesca’s  dedication and passion resulted in live events becoming “business as usual” for the channel. Classica channel started to co-produce with Arena di Verona live and productions, involving international producers (including those from Germany and France) - 5 opera productions across 2011-2014.

​

In 2012 and 2013 Francesca faced the two most important challenges of her career. In 2012 she produced Aida 3D, the first worldwide 3D live event from an open theatre (in partnership with Sky 3D). In 2013 she led the transition of the channel from a standalone subscription to being included in the core Sky home package and thus visible to all subscribers.

In 2013 Francesca started her current role as Programme Executive. In this role she managed the channel rebranding and content reorganization, as well as the commissioning of new publishing and format projects to ensure the channel appealed to a wider and harder to reach audience of those less educated in classical music. During this time as the channel moved from Standard Definition to High Definition Francesca managed the reorganisation and conversion of the whole channel' programs catalogue (including the renegotiation of all in-house rights).

 

She has moved to the UK to pursue a new professional dream. While on maternity leave, she started a blog and studied digital marketing.