Chauncey Packer

The Washington National Opera will present a 2024–2025 season that pays tribute to the grand tradition of opera, while shaping its future with two new productions. See full programming and learn how to purchase tickets.

Celebrate the joy of the season with Handel's Messiah and Holiday Pops performed by the South Florida Symphony Orchestra.

South Florida Symphony Orchestra (SFSO), led by Sebrina María Alfonso, has announced its 2023/24 season featuring five classical Masterworks concerts and Handel's glorious holiday masterpiece Messiah. This new season features Brahms, Bernstein, Schubert, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky and more, including Symphony premieres by trailblazing female composers Florence Price, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Jessie Montgomery. SFSO will also host a 200th anniversary celebration of Beethoven's magnificent Symphony No. 9.

In search of new audiences, the Met has followed Terence Blanchard’s FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES with the jazz musician/composer’s first opera, CHAMPION, the story of closeted boxer Emile Griffith’s rise and fall from grace. Honestly, never have I heard people whose usual venues are Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium and Monday Night Football on ESPN talk about how they “wanted to see the new opera at the Met.”

Combine a supreme farceur with a stentorian voice that thrills and you get baritone Michael Volle’s portrayal of the title role in Verdi’s FALSTAFF, which breezed into town late last week for a limited run at the Met. While we’ve had dramatic singers in the role before, they were mostly from Italian repertoire; I don’t know when the last time a Wagnerian--a Wotan from the Ring, for instance--took on this role around here, but Volle did himself proud.

There’s more contemporary opera in New York these days than there used to be and I’ll drink to that. But there’s nothing else that does it with the panache of the PROTOTYPE Festival, the brainchild of Beth Morrison Projects and HERE.

On Sunday, December 11 at 10 AM ET live, in-person & virtual, Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church will present G. F. Handel's Messiah under to baton of maestro Courtney Carey

Ensemble Theatre Company is presenting CARMEN JONES, music by Georges Bizet with book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, choreography by Lisa Ruffin, musical direction by William Foster McDaniel, and directed by Jonathan Fox. CARMEN JONES runs through Sunday, October 23, 2022 at The New Vic, 33 W. Victoria Street in Santa Barbara. See photos here!

Ensemble Theatre Company will present the first show of its 2022-23 Season, CARMEN JONES, music by Georges Bizet with book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, choreography by Lisa Ruffin, musical direction by William Foster McDaniel, and directed by Jonathan Fox. CARMEN JONES begins previews on Thursday, October 6. See photos here!

Having been on pause since the pandemic, Liz Player (Founding Executive and Artistic Director, Harlem Chamber Players) is pleased to announce the rare NYC performance of the Harlem Renaissance composer Nathaniel Dett's (1882-1943) masterpiece oratorio The Ordering of Moses, which was cut short during a radio broadcast in 1937.

Lyric Opera of Chicago will present the company premiere of Terence Blanchard and Kasi Lemmons's new opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the latest in Lyric's continuing long-term focus on developing and presenting new work on its mainstage.

It’s been a long 18 months since the last opera on the Met’s stage. The Terence Blanchard-Kasi Lemmons FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES roared into Lincoln Center to let the audience know what it has been missing.

From April 6-10, American Lyric Theater (ALT) presents FROM ERASED TO SELF-EMPOWERED: CELEBRATING BIPOC OPERA COMPOSERS AND LIBRETTISTS, a three-part online seminar and roundtable, culminating in a free virtual concert performance April 10th at 7:30 pm et. The program is open to composers, librettists, educators and the general public. Advance registration is required.

Black Opera Productions LLC, and Presenting Partner, Brookfield Place, will present Jessye Norman at 75: A Celebration LIVE on Tuesday, September 15, 2020 at 6:00 PM ET, to commemorate the legendary singer's first birthday in memoriam, presented in support of the Estate of Jessye Norman and Jessye Norman School of the Arts, and the forthcoming documentary film Black Opera. 

Black Opera Productions LLC and the Jessye Norman Estate will present Jessye Norman at 75: A Celebration.

Black Opera Productions is presenting Black Opera Live, a weekly live broadcast featuring candid conversations and career chats with Black American opera stars of today. Join host Kenneth Overton on Instagram Live @blackoperafilm on Mondays at 7pm EDT from June 1 through August 31.

The Kimmel Center Cultural Campus, along with Resident Company support from Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and The Philadelphia Orchestra, celebrates Women's History Month in March 2020 with an array of programming honoring a breadth of female artistry and expression. Additionally, in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, Philadelphia and Drexel University's Vision 2020's 'Women 100' National Women's Equality Initiative will host a series of events, including the Seat at the Table FREE and interactive exhibition, opening in March and running through September in the Kimmel Center's Commonwealth Plaza.

On Sunday, November 3, at 3 PM, at the Strand Theatre in Dorchester, MassOpera presents a special concert performance of Freedom Ride by Boston-based composer Dan Shore.

Encompass New Opera Theatre in association with The Church of The Ascension and The Social Justice Music Factory present its annual PARADIGM SHIFTS, MUSIC AND FILM FESTIVAL!

'Porgy and Bess' has been called the first great American opera, made all the more significant by being set in a black American community and performed by black artists in 1935, a time when black culture was exoticized by the country's white majority.