Opera Philadelphia is about to conclude this season with an interesting take on some of the most famous works from an American poet. At the same time, the company announces an ambitious 2026-27 season that combines a mix of cutting-edge new operas with a seldom-seen classic.
Opera Philadelphia is bringing to stage the Philadelphia premiere of ”The Black Clown,” a show based on the poetry of Langston Hughes, a defining voice in jazz poetry and a central figure during the Harlem Renaissance.
The show will run May 14-17 at the Miller Theatre. Tickets and more information are available at www.operaphila.org.
“The Black Crown,” co-created by music supervisor and bass-baritone Davóne Tines performing in the title role, fuses vaudeville, gospel, opera, jazz and spirituals to bring Hughes’ verse to life onstage.
“Langston Hughes’ expansive and penetrating engagement with the life of the other has been a guiding salve since I was first introduced to his work in elementary school,” said Tines. “This production provides the opportunity to harness Hughes’ words and my life experience as a Black man to claim humanity for myself, my race and all people.”
“You laugh / Because I’m poor and black and funny…” opens the poem and stage production, unraveling into a reflection of the Black experience in America.
Written in 1931, Hughes’ powerfully dramatic monologue is organized into two columns: the “mood,” which highlights musical and emotional cues, and the “poem,” the narrative core of the work. Together, these columns express a strong sense of being “Black in a white world,” with the perspective paralleling Hughes’ personal interpretation and the societal perception projected onto Black individuals.
With a career that spanned the Harlem Renaissance of the Twenties and the Black Arts movement of the Sixties, Langston Hughes was the most prolific black poet of his era. Between 1926, when he published his pioneering ”The Weary Blues,” to 1967, the year of his death, when he published ”The Panther and the Lash,” Hughes would write 16 books of poems, two novels, seven collections of short stories, two autobiographies, five works of nonfiction and nine children’s books.
Opera Philadelphia will continue the journey of artistic experimentation and discovery with five new productions slated for the 2026-27 season across three Philadelphia venues.
“I want Opera Philadelphia’s world of opera to feel like your world, no matter who you are,” said Opera Philadelphia General Director and President Anthony Roth Costanzo. “Whether the music is old or new, whether you’re a first-timer or an aficionado, you can come to any (or preferably all) of these five productions and have that uncanny feeling of having lived some part of the story you see on stage in front of you.”
The season will launch in September with Costanzo on stage alongside some of the great operatic stars of today, celebrated tenor Lawrence Brownlee and radiant soprano Lauren Snouffer, in the company premiere of “Mitridate, re di Ponto,” an early career triumph for composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who completed the opera when he was just 14-years-old.
In her first opera, Courtney Bryan, an Opera Philadelphia Composer in Residence from 2022-24, brings plaintive new life to Tennessee Williams’ “Suddenly Last Summer,” about a family secret and a mother’s desperate attempt to silence the truth.
In an production ripped from the headlines, February 2027, brings a revival of George and Ira Gershwins’ most overlooked work, “Let ‘Em Eat Cake,” a biting satire about an American president who refuses to accept a reelection loss and stages a fascist coup and a redesign of the White House.
Visionary director Zack Winokur leads one of the first productions to be staged since the 1933 Broadway debut of the dystopian American farce, which features one of the Gershwin brothers’ most complex and inventive scores.
Director Kaneza Schaal leads a lush new production of “Aida” in April 2027, marking the first performances of Verdi’s masterpiece at the Academy of Music in more than two decades.
The season concludes in May 2027, with the world premiere of “Sitcom,” an episodic opera by composer Luke Styles and librettist Alan McKendrick that co-opts the television sitcom format for the opera stage. Conceived as multiple 30-minute “episodes,” the opera takes the characters Max, Bettina, Joan and Vendetta on hugely transformative journeys, but just like on TV, each of them returns to their status quo for the beginning of the next episode.
“The extraordinary artists who come to play in our sandbox are cooking up a feast of beauty, and we are excited to serve it to you on a silver platter for less than the cost of a cheesesteak,” Costanzo said. “Through interdisciplinary collaborations, new perspectives, and a love of the craft, this company is here to show you that opera is as much a part of our future as it is a part of our past.”