Half-spirit and half-mortal, the Empress lives in fear of a curse: If she doesn’t acquire a human shadow in three days’ time, the spirit world will reclaim her—and turn her husband to stone. Strauss’ rarely performed masterpiece returns for the first time in over 30 years in a vibrant production designed by acclaimed artist David Hockney. Former San Francisco Opera Music Director Sir Donald Runnicles conducts.

EPSG:4326

Die Frau ohne Schatten

War Memorial Opera House

It's been three years since she passed. Now on the Day of the Dead in 1957, a lonely, ailing Diego Rivera makes a final wish: to see his wife Frida Kahlo once more. And the underworld heeds his call.

El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego

Sorcery, jealous rages, desire, and hellish Demons all come into play in Handel’s opera Amadigi di Gaula. This compact, taut drama is a vehicle for Handel to do what he did best: exploring the emotions of his characters, from love to suffering—reflecting on sentiment in a way perhaps deeper than in any of his other operas. In this composition he conjures a surprising sound world with star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo here in the title role. Handel also makes prominent use of wind instruments, which make the music unusually colorful, befitting this story which explores the full gamut of human emotion.
Amadigi di Gaula is a co-production between Boston Baroque and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chrorale.

Handel's Amadigi di Gaula

Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera

Kaija Saariaho’s intensely moving opera Adriana Mater explores the relationship between a mother and her son as they navigate a world rumbling with the threat of violence. Esa-Pekka Salonen and director Peter Sellars helm this semi-staged production.

Kaija Saariaho's Adriana Mater

Davies Symphony Hall

Podcast link: https://youtu.be/4hagYvrYbuM

The Artelize Podcast and Kasper Holten - Pedefining Opera for the modern world

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d36M5Hi6O80

The Artelize Podcast - A legacy of innovation in Opera: Celebrating Marc A. Scorca

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59E40S_EQSY

The Artelize Podcast: A love letter that was never sent

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THv6htilWtI

The Artelize Podcast and Adolfo Corrado: Mediterranean flavors, opera and social media

Composer Anthony R. Green’s Tenderhooks explores modern dating and how dating apps have changed the way individuals interact in real life. Writing from his own experiences as a Black, gay cis-male, he has pondered, in particular, about how dating apps have influenced relationships among homosexual men. He explains, “Combined with articles theorizing how such apps have ruined certain institutions (such as “the gay bar”) and are slowly eroding the concept of older gay mentors, my thoughts about the dating app world have led me to think about the future of gay youth growing up in a world where certain elements of life are just a swipe away.”

Composer Kurt Rohde and poet Donna Masini’s new micro-opera, 4:30 Movie, is a 20 minute work for soprano, percussion, video mirror, and electronics based on Masini’s poems from Masini. These poems, funny, touching, and ruthless, take the reader through the diagnosis, treatment, and death of the author’s sister Karen from cancer. This resonates with the composer, currently under treatment for his own cancer. The texts provide action, dialogue, engagement, and unexpected moments of sorrow and truth as the writer’s sister slowly succumbs to her illness.

Opera: Tenderhooks & 4:30 Movie

Bayview Opera House

Opera Parallèle is taking you to the top of the world! Immerse yourself in the awe-inspiring landscapes of Everest for a one-of-a-kind operatic adventure. Based on the true story of an ill-fated expedition in 1996, a group of mountaineers tap into the depths of their physical and emotional selves to realize their dreams of conquering Everest.

Everest: An Immersive Experience

Z Space

Adapted from Stephen King’s iconic novel, the Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning team of Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell bring The Shining to even more frightening depths than ever before.

The Shining

The Blue Shield of California Theater at YBCA

Handel’s cantata Apollo & Dafne was written in Venice when he was just 24 years old. It tells the story of Apollo’s vanity as he suggests that even Cupid’s bow is no match for his own. Challenging Apollo’s boastfulness, Cupid shoots his arrows and Apollo falls prey to rapturous yearnings for Dafne. She spurns his advances and, in a desperate effort to escape, is transformed into a laurel tree.
Love brings life to a statue in Rameau's Pygmalion. The protagonist sculptor has carved a beautiful marble figure and has fallen desperately in love with his inanimate work of art. He faithfully entreats Venus to turn his handiwork into a breathing, captivating, and singing creature. Love inspires a miracle and triumphs over longing.

Harmonious Love

St. Stephen's Episcopal Church

St. Mark's Episcopal Church

Davis Community Church

St. Mark's Lutheran Church, San Francisco

Familial revenge runs deep in Giuseppe Verdi’s towering opera of grand passions stymied at every turn. Music Director Eun Sun Kim continues her Verdi cycle with Il Trovatore, a work of sublime arias, passionate ensembles, and the rousing Anvil Chorus.
Sir David McVicar’s incisive, visceral production, rooted in the haunting imagery of Spanish painter Francisco Goya and the power struggles of the Spanish War of Independence, returns to San Francisco.

Il Trovatore

He arrived from her dreams to save her from a nightmare. Trapped in a scheme to frame her for her brother’s disappearance, Elsa von Brabant prays for a savior to rescue her. And one appears: a knight conveyed by a beautiful swan. He has only one request: that Elsa must never ask his name.
Can Elsa trust her life and love to a stranger whose mysterious identity is eating away at her? Lohengrin marks the beginning of Music Director Eun Sun Kim’s journey through the works of Richard Wagner, creating a new generation of Wagnerian experiences that will speak to the soul of our collective humanity.

Lohengrin

Writing is the preservation of identity in the new opera Omar from Grammy award-winning artist Rhiannon Giddens and composer Michael Abels. A true story of an indomitable faith enshrined in a two-hundred-year-old autobiography in an opera acclaimed by The New York Times as a “sweeping achievement.”
In the early 1800s, Islamic scholar Omar Ibn Said is forcibly taken from his village in West Africa and sold into slavery in Charleston, South Carolina. Attempting to flee, he is imprisoned in Fayetteville and taken to the plantation of another slaveholder, eager to convert him to Christianity. There Omar records his story in Arabic, transforming his world into an expansive canvas of text and faith, profoundly realized in Kaneza Schaal’s transcendent production.

Omar

A device brought the world to our fingertips, connected us in unparalleled ways, and streamlined communication. But for the man behind the machine, life was far from streamlined.
The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, by acclaimed San Francisco composer Mason Bates and Pulitzer-winning librettist Mark Campbell, comes home to the place where it all began.

Under the baton of Michael Christie, Bates' score takes us on an operatic journey through the fragmented memory of love, betrayal, obsession and death, weaving together classical lyricism and a techno soundscape informed by the audio of early computers.

The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs

With no money, no confidence, and no hope of winning the hand of the alluring hotel owner Adina, the young waiter Nemorino entrusts his chance of romance to a quack salesman and a dubious bottle of. . . magic elixir.
Passions bubble to the surface in Gaetano Donizetti’s effervescent comedy The Elixir of Love, a quest for passion and romance on the sunny Mediterranean Riviera.
Director Daniel Slater and designer Robert Innes Hopkins create a sun-soaked world of pleasure where cocktails flow freely and hot-air balloons glide across the sky—a harkening back to Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, brought to musical life under the baton of conductor Ramón Tebar in his company debut.

The Elixir of Love

Experience act one of The Elixir of Love sitting in the audience, and then immerse yourself in the world of the effervescent comedy in a transformed opera house.

The Elixir of Love Encounter

Presented by San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Opera Guild in partnership with BRAVO! Club.

The Cocktail Dinner Celebration

Back by popular demand, “A Baroque New Year’s Eve at the Opera” will usher in the new year within San Francisco’s beautiful Herbst Theatre. Start an early night on the town with a delightful program of arias, duets, and instrumental music from Baroque opera and concert, with plenty of time left for more celebrations in the evening or an early return home for a peaceful night. Bring your family and friends to celebrate a New Year full of wonderful music.

A Baroque New Year's Eve at the Opera

War Memorial and Performing Arts Center

Olimpia Vendicata is Ariadne auf Naxos in a distinctly more 17th-century Italian key.
Poor Olimpia, a Princess of Holland, is abandoned on a desert island by her faithless lover, Bireno. Kidnapped by pirates, she is made a slave at the elegant, sensuous court of Hibernia, where it seems everybody is amorous of somebody else.
(Remember, this is fiction.) Imagine her surprise when Bireno crops up and begins
wooing the Hibernian princess Alinda! With finesse and malice, Olimpia exacts
poetic justice.

Olimpia Vendicata

ODC Theater

Famed for her steadfast devotion to her husband, Lucretia becomes a target in a brutal game of sex and power. Set to one of Benjamin Britten’s most searing and lyrical scores, this challenging and emotionally charged chamber opera explores issues that are at once timeless and starkly relevant today.

The Rape of Lucretia

In this World Premiere opera spanning generations, journey through a future where hope and resilience shine in a world on the brink.

Opera events in San Francisco, CA

Die Frau ohne Schatten

San Francisco Opera

El Último Sueño de Frida ...

San Francisco Opera

Handel's Amadigi di Gaula...

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chora...

Kaija Saariaho's Adriana ...

San Francisco Symphony

The Artelize Podcast and ...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast - A ...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast: A l...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast and ...

Artelize

Opera: Tenderhooks & 4:30...

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble

Everest: An Immersive Exp...

Opera Parallele

The Shining

Opera Parallele

Harmonious Love

American Bach Soloists

Il Trovatore

San Francisco Opera

Lohengrin

San Francisco Opera

Omar

San Francisco Opera

The (R)evolution of Steve...

San Francisco Opera

The Elixir of Love

San Francisco Opera

The Elixir of Love Encoun...

San Francisco Opera

The Cocktail Dinner Celeb...

San Francisco Opera

A Baroque New Year's Eve ...

American Bach Soloists

Olimpia Vendicata

Ars Minerva

The Rape of Lucretia

Merola Opera Program

The Emissary

Opera Parallele

Opera Workshop Showcase

San Francisco Conservatory of Music