San Diego Opera has today unveiled its 2026-27 season today with a lineup that includes three mainstage classics from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, as well as a 21st-century work that will revive the company’s chamber opera program.
The season will begin in July with the previously announced national touring production of Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce’s 2016 chamber opera “Fellow Travelers.” Next up in October is Giuseppe Verdi’s tragic 1851 opera “Rigoletto.” In February 2027, the company will present Carlisle Floyd’s 1955 folk music-infused opera “Susannah.” The season will conclude in April 2027 with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1786 masterpiece “The Marriage of Figaro.”
San Diego Opera General Director and CEO David Bennett said the upcoming season will expand the number of productions from three to four. It also reinvigorates the company’s presentation of smaller chamber works at the Balboa Theatre, which were suspended a few years ago for budgetary reasons.
The new season was announced five days before the final production of the three-show 2025-26 season, “Carmen,” opens at the San Diego Civic Theatre on Friday. Bennett said he felt confident in programming the new expanded season because ticket sales have been so strong over the past year.
“We had a real concern whether subscribers would come back, but we are seeing them come back season over season. They’re not where they were before the pandemic, but we’re neck and neck now with where single ticket buyer sales were before COVID,” Bennett said.
Bennett said putting together the new season was challenging, but he was grateful for the help of Artistic Administrator Adam Cioffari, who joined San Diego Opera last year. Cioffari previously worked in the administrations of San Francisco Opera, Sarasota Opera, Maryland Lyric Opera and Opera Project Columbus. He’s also a bass-baritone opera singer and an opera stage director.
“He’s been a huge asset for me and a great sounding board,” Bennett said of Cioffari. “He sang in Germany for a while, and as a stage director and administrator, he knows so many of the younger generation of singers who I’m just getting to know. This current season and the next one will feature a good combination of the singers I know and the singers I’d like to get to know.”
“Coming up with a season is like solving a really fun puzzle, and once you find the winning combination, it just feels right,” Bennett said. “This year what excites me is the range of programming, from the Southern California premiere of ‘Fellow Travelers’ this July, to Carlisle Floyd’s modern classic ‘Susannah,’ to tragic and comic masterpieces from Verdi and Mozart. I’m thrilled about the returning and brand-new artists we’ll be sharing with San Diego, as we continue to partner with the world-class San Diego Symphony Orchestra.”
New season subscriptions go on sale Friday, with three-opera packages ranging from $159 to $939 and four-opera packages from $204 to $1,188. Single ticket prices will range from $51 to $363. Tickets can be purchased at sdopera.org.
Here’s a closer look at the 2026-27 season:
Kyle Pfortmiller and Joseph Lattanzi in Seattle Opera’s production of the opera “Fellow Travelers,” which San Diego Opera will present in July. (David Jaewon Oh)
‘Fellow Travelers’ national tour
San Diego Opera is one 10 U.S. opera companies and presenting organizations that will host Up Until Now’s two-year, 10th anniversary touring production of Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce’s opera, which premiered in 2016 in Cincinnati. The opera is based on the 2007 Thomas Mallon novel, which was also made into a 2023 limited series for Paramount+. The opera tells the story of the forbidden romance between Timothy and Hawkins, two men who worked in the federal government in Washington, D.C., during the McCarthy era’s “Lavender Scare.”
The production will be directed by Kevin Newbury, and Bruce Stasyna will conduct a 17-piece chamber orchestra. The tour stars tenor Andy Acosta as Timothy and baritone Joseph Lattanzi as Hawkins and will feature up to five additional singers. The tour is being presented in association with the Lavender Names Project, a grassroots archival project to collect the names and stories of LGBTQ+ people who were systematically discriminated against and fired by federal and local governments in the United States, including the military. The opera will be sung in English, with English and Spanish translations projected in supertitles above the stage.
“Composer Kevin Spears’ music sounds contemporary and also ancient at the same time,” Bennetti said of “Fellow Travelers.” “It’s inspired by troubadour singing, especially in the moments of love. It has melismatic, florid passages that sound ecstatic about love and it’s very tuneful and melodic. He writes gorgeously for the singing voice.”
7:30 p.m. July 10 and 11; 1 p.m. July 12. Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., downtown.
Scott Quinn as the Duke of Mantua in San Diego Opera’s production of “Rigoletto” in 2019. The Verdi opera will return in October as part of the company’s 2026-27 season. (Karli Cadel)
‘Rigoletto’ by Giuseppe Verdi
Featuring some of Verdi’s most famous arias, including “La donna è mobile,” “Rigoletto” is named after the jester in the court of the immoral and womanizing Duke of Mantua. When Rigoletto’s cruel taunting angers a Count, he takes revenge by telling the Duke that Rigoletto has a beautiful young daughter named Gilda. Intrigued, the Duke secretly seduces Gilda, breaks her heart and destroys Rigoletto’s life.
The production will star baritone Michael Chioldi as Rigoletto, who last appeared with San Diego Opera in 2002. Making company debuts are soprano Madison Leonard as Gilda, Argentinian-American tenor José Simerilla Romero as the Duke, bass Peixin Chen as paid assassin Sparafucile and Tijuana-based mezzo-soprano Guadalupe Paz as Sparafucile’s sister, Maddalena. San Diego Opera Principal Conductor Yves Abel will lead the San Diego Symphony. The opera will be sung in Italian, with English and Spanish translations projected in supertitles above the stage.
“Michael Chioldi, who is playing Rigoletto, sings at the Met quite a bit. He has a big, wonderful voice and is a real technician and phenomenal performer,” Bennett said. “Madison Leonard, our Gilda, has sung this role quit a bit in the U.S. And the Duke is the perfect role for José. (The role) need some heft, but has to be seductive and charming, and José has all that.”
7:30 p.m. October 23 and 24; 2 p.m. Oct. 26. San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Ave., downtown.
A scene from Opera Omaha’s production of Carlisle Floyd’s opera “Susannah.” First presented by San Diego Opera in 1981, Floyd’s “Susannah” will be presented in February 2027 as part of San Diego Opera’s 2026-27 season. (Thomas Grady)
‘Susannah’ by Carlisle Floyd
South Carolina-born opera composer Carlisle Floyd, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 95, wrote the librettos and scores for several operas, most of them set in the American South from the post-Civil War era to the 1950s, including “Cold Sassy Tree, “The Passion of Jonathan Wade” and “Susannah,” the latter of which was his most famous work. Inspired by the biblical story of Susannah and the Elders, it’s about an 18-year-old girl named Susannah who is condemned as a sinner by the church leaders and citizens of her rural Appalachian town for innocently bathing in a creek.
San Diego Opera had a long association with Floyd, producing five of his operas, beginning with “Susannah,” from 1981 to 2001. This year marks the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Sopranos Hailey Clark and Teresa Perotta will alternate in the role of Susannah. Veteran San Diego Opera artist and bass-baritone Greer Grimsley will return in the role of visiting preacher Olin Blitch, tenor Joseph Dennis will play Susannah’s protective brother Sam and tenor Christian Sanders, a graduate of Point Loma Nazarene University, will play Susannah’s betrayer Little Bat.
“Susannah” will be directed by Patricia Racette, who first staged this production in 2023 for Opera Theatre of St. Louis, where she now serves as company artistic director. San Diego Opera Principal Conductor Yves Abel will lead the San Diego Symphony. The opera will be sung in English, with English and Spanish translations projected in supertitles above the stage.
“Patricia Racette sang the role of Susannah many times so she has a deep connection to the work. This ‘Susannah’ production looks very modern. It’s set in Appalachia in the 1970s. It’s very advanced in terms of its use of video and production design,” Bennett said.
7:30 p.m. Feb. 12 and 13; 2 p.m. Feb. 14, 2027. San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Ave., downtown.
A scene from Opera Omaha’s production of Carlisle Floyd’s opera “Susannah.” First presented by San Diego Opera in 1981, Floyd’s “Susannah” will be presented in February 2027 as part of San Diego Opera’s 2026-27 season. (Thomas Grady)
‘The Marriage of Figaro’ by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Following up on its production of Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” last month, San Diego Opera is presenting another opera (this one by Mozart) inspired by French playwright Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais’s trilogy of Figaro tales. In “Barber,” Figaro helped Count Almaviva court his future wife. In “The Marriage of Figaro,” the Count has grown bored with his marriage and decides it’s his noble right to bed Figaro’s fiancée, Susanna, on her wedding night. Instead, Figaro conspires with the Countess to up-end the Count’s scheme and humiliate him. Packed end to end with beautiful music, this opera is known for the arias “Non più andrai,” “Voi che sapete,” “Porgi, Amor” and “Dove Sono.”
Bass-baritone Nicholas Newton, a San Diego native and San Diego State University graduate, will sing the title role of Figaro. Soprano Caidy J. Bryan will play Susannah. Soprano Sarah Tucker, whose past credits with San Diego Opera include “La bohème,” “Cosi fan tutte” and “Carmen,” will sing the Countess. Baritone Dean Murphy will sing the Count. And mezzo-soprano Lisa Marie Rogali will sing the trouser role (meaning a woman singer playing the role of an adolescent boy) of Cherubino.
“This opera stands right next to ‘Don Giovanni’ as the best opera ever written,” Bennett said. Maybe it’s considered a comedy, but it’s a comedy full of virtue and intrigue, forgiveness and humanity. The music is beautiful and the arias are perfectly constructed.”
Of the singers, Bennett said Newton is “having a big international career and I’ve been looking for opportunities to bring him back.” Bryan has a “youthful beautiful lyric voice, not a soubrette, because it has a little more heft to it. It’s full of color and very beautiful.” And he calls Tucker “one of my favorite singers.”
The San Diego Symphony will accompany the singers, who will perform in Italian, with English and Spanish translations projected in supertitles above the stage.
7:30 p.m. April 2 and 3; 2 p.m. April 4, 2027. San Diego Civic Theatre.