Opera San Jose

Our season concludes with Verdi’s tragic love story, La Traviata. The scandalous love affair between the courtesan Violetta Valery and the young gentleman Alfredo Germont threatens to tear the fabric of the Parisian social order apart. Set during the construction of the Eiffel Tower, this glittering production brings us into the heart of French society and makes us a bystander to one of the greatest and saddest love stories of all time. Mikayla Sager, most recently seen as one of our Mimìs in La Bohème, returns as the lovestruck courtesan with Former Artist-in-Residence WooYoung Yoon as her young lover. Former Conductor in Residence Johannes Löhner returns to make his principal conducting debut for Opera San José with inaugural Director-in-Residence Tara Branham returning to direct.

La Traviata

California Theatre

Back after 12 years, Opera San Jose builds a new production of Don Giovanni, Mozart’s dark psychological thriller. Seduction, rebellion, and supernatural justice collide in a thrilling look at a notorious libertine’s downfall. The production follows a charismatic anti-hero who pursues pleasure without remorse, leaving a trail of broken hearts and vengeful spirits in a world re-examining the limits of entitlement. Maria Brea returns as the cheated and furious Donna Elvira, with Jonghyun Park as the naive, well-intentioned Don Ottavio. Music Director Joseph Marcheso and stage director Alek Schrader collaborate to bring this visceral inquiry into power and conscience to the heart of Silicon Valley.

Don Giovanni

Tradition meets revolution in Opera San Jose’s new production of Fiddler on the Roof. In a vibrant Jewish shtetl on the eve of upheaval, Tevye, the enduring dairyman, grapples with his daughters’ dreams of love while clinging to the customs that provide his world’s structural integrity. In one of America’s most diverse immigrant hubs, this story of heritage, adaptation, and belonging is deeply personal, a reflection of San Jose’s own balancing act between honoring the past and stepping bravely into the future. OSJ favorite Eugene Brancoveanu makes his role debut as Tevye, joined by Nicole Koh as Tzeitel and Melissa Sondhi as Hodel. Celebrated conductor George Manahan returns to the podium alongside director Crystal Manich to reignite this celebration of joy and human resilience on the California Theatre Stage.

Fiddler on the Roof

The gripping intensity of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic arrives in an all-new production at the California Theatre, led by visionary General Director Shawna Lucey. Chronicling the moral and emotional turmoil surrounding the Manhattan Project, this opera dramatizes the high­stakes days when J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team confronted the ethical weight of unleashing unprecedented destructive power. Haunting choruses and pulsating rhythms capture the tension between scientific breakthrough and human conscience. In the heart of Silicon Valley, where ideas become forces that shape the globe, this landmark work lands not only as history, but as a reflection of our own innovation and its enduring consequence. Maestro Joseph Marcheso returns to the podium to conduct this essential inquiry into the soul of the machine.

Doctor Atomic

We close our season with the most celebrated tale of passion, jealousy, and fatal attraction, set against the sultry backdrop of Seville: Bizet’s Carmen. In this high-stakes collision of autonomy and obsession, the bold, free-spirited Carmen refuses to be possessed, drawing the soldier Don Jose into a dangerous world of defiance that ends in a seismic reckoning of the heart. From the defiant “Habanera” to the triumphant “Toreador Song,” this production pulses with an intensity and sensuality that persists until the final, bitter moments. Alex Boyer, fresh from his Met debut, returns to the California Theatre stage as the obsessed Don José. This beloved Opera San José production, which has introduced the transformative force of opera to thousands, remains an essential experience for a city that values radical independence and the unfiltered spirit.

Carmen

Rumors and intrigue swirled after the passing of famed composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, inspiring this one-act opera by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, MOZART And SALIERI, which follows the Italian composer Antonio Salieri, lamenting the envy gnawing at his heart – “Mozart!” Believing him unworthy of his genius, Salieri sets in motion a devious plot to poison the famed composer. But as Mozart plays Salieri weeps – not knowing whether villainy or genius would be his legacy.

Mozart And Salieri