SAN FRANCISCO OPERA’S 2024–25 SEASON ANNOUNCED

102nd season opening weekend kicks off September 6 with Opera Ball and Un Ballo in Maschera; Free Opera in the Park concert September 8

Music Director Eun Sun Kim’s annual exploration of operas by Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner continues with new-to-San Francisco productions of UN BALLO IN MASCHERA and TRISTAN AND ISOLDE

West Coast premiere of Poul Ruders and Paul Bentley’s THE HANDMAID’S TALE conducted by Karen Kamensek featuring role debut of Irene Roberts as Offred

Eun Sun Kim conducts Mozart’s IDOMENEO in Lindy Hume’s staging starring Matthew Polenzani, Daniela Mack, Ying Fang and Elza van den Heever

Eve-Maud Hubeaux makes American debut in the title role of Bizet’s CARMEN and Ramón Tebar conducts two casts for Puccini’s LA BOHÈME

Concerts include 200th anniversary performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Pride Concert celebrating San Francisco’s LGBTQIA+ community

New opera commission announced for 2025–26 Season: THE MONKEY KING  by Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang

Tickets available at (415) 864-3330 and sfopera.com

SAN FRANCISO, CA (February 20, 2024) — San Francisco Opera Tad and Dianne Taube General Director Matthew Shilvock and Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim announced today details for the Company’s 102nd season. A weekend of festivities opens the new season from September 6–8 with Opera Ball, Giuseppe Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera (The Masked Ball) and the free annual Opera in the Park concert held in Golden Gate Park.

The 2024–25 Season includes six mainstage opera productions along with concert presentations including a one-night-only performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on October 26, honoring the work’s 200th anniversary and, in the summer of 2025, a special Pride Concert celebrating San Francisco’s LGBTQIA+ community.

Matthew Shilvock said: “San Francisco Opera continues its second century with a season that demonstrates the potential of opera to connect to the most fundamental aspects of our humanity, whether through works of searing contemporary resonance like The Handmaid’s Tale or profound archetypes like Tristan and Idomeneo. We launch the 102nd season at a time of tremendous creativity in which new audiences are connecting with opera as never before but also at a challenging time in which the fundamental fiscal model of the arts is being stretched to its limits. We must harness the incredible energy of this moment and keep this amazing opera company moving forward, but at the same time, we must scale ourselves appropriately to our revenues. San Francisco Opera is a place where the leading artists of our time are eager to do their best work and audiences come to find community, inspiration, joy and catharsis. The art form of opera has evolved over four centuries, and I am very optimistic for how it will continue to evolve into a new chapter here in the Bay Area, one of the most creatively vibrant regions in the world.”

San Francisco Opera’s 2024–25 Season features Eun Sun Kim’s initiative to conduct an opera by Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner in San Francisco each season. Born in the same year (1813) amid divergent cultural circumstances, Verdi and Wagner expanded the expressive possibilities of opera in new directions and their revolutionary ideas continue to captivate the public’s imagination and inspire ever-evolving creative directions. Kim’s exploration of the operas of these composers began in 2022 with Verdi’s La Traviata and continued in 2023 with Il Trovatore and Wagner’s Lohengrin. This season, Kim brings the Company and audiences into the worlds of UN BALLO IN MASCHERA, Verdi’s 1859 drama of passion and treachery, and TRISTAN AND ISOLDE, Wagner’s epic romance, also written in 1859, which changed the course of artistic history. Each work will be presented in a new-to-San Francisco Opera production.

On October 26, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony comes to San Francisco Opera for the first time in Company history with Kim leading the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, Chorus and vocal soloists. Following this summer’s production of The Magic Flute, Kim returns to the music of Mozart in Summer 2025 to lead the composer’s rarely performed IDOMENEO.

Eun Sun Kim said: "Three of the greatest masterpieces in music history form the core of our fall season, including the addition of a symphony—and what a symphony! After the 1824 premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, composers were greatly influenced by this revolutionary work. Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde impacted the musical world with similar power after the famous ‘Tristan Chord’ was heard for the first time. Tristan not only showcases the pinnacle of German Romanticism, but Wagner at his finest. The legacy of Beethoven is also evident in Giuseppe Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera where we are overwhelmed by an enormous wealth of melodies, a distillation of the drama and an economy of means that only the best composers can master. Then, in 2025, we revisit the foundation of these revolutionary masterpieces with Idomeneo. In this piece, Mozart sought to explore and transcend boundaries, creating a new foundation upon which future generations would build.”

The Company continues its commitment to telling stories that reflect on current issues with the West Coast premiere of THE HANDMAID’S TALE. Based on Margaret Atwood’s novel about a dystopian American future, this incisive work by composer Poul Ruders and librettist Paul Bentley is among the most critically acclaimed operas of the past three decades. The new co-production with The Royal Danish Theatre will be presented in September and October 2024.

Georges Bizet’s CARMEN and Giacomo Puccini’s LA BOHÈME return with international casts headed by fast-rising talents making their American and house debuts alongside Company favorites in opera’s greatest roles.