Christmas Night Opera Gala to Return to Carnegie Hall with Joyce DiDonato
The second annual gala will present five internationally acclaimed opera stars in a single evening at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium.
Following its inaugural performance last December, the Christmas Night Opera Gala will return to Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage on Tuesday, December 22 at 8:00 p.m. At the height of the holiday season, five internationally acclaimed opera artists will come together on one of the world's most celebrated stages for an evening of extraordinary voices and masterpieces of the operatic repertoire.
Presented by Wintour Performing Arts Incorporated, the second annual gala brings together artists whose careers span the world's leading opera houses and concert stages. Three-time GRAMMY Award winners Joyce DiDonato and Isabel Leonard, two of America's leading mezzo-sopranos, will be joined by Italian soprano Rosa Feola, American tenor Michael Fabiano, and Ukrainian baritone Iurii Samoilov. As he did last year, Italian conductor Francesco Lanzillotta will once again take the podium. He will continue as conductor and music director for the next two Christmas Night Opera Gala concerts.
The five artists will present a program of celebrated arias and scenes from some of opera's most popular works, offering audiences a rare opportunity to hear, in a single evening, voices ordinarily encountered on the world's major stages.
The gala's return continues a holiday tradition established at Carnegie Hall in 2025. The inaugural Christmas Night Opera Gala featured Nadine Sierra, Sondra Radvanovsky, Asmik Grigorian, Thomas Hampson, Brian Jagde, and Anita Monserrat. This year's new constellation of artists continues the project's central idea: to bring together some of today's most distinctive operatic voices in a single concert and offer audiences an exceptional concentration of vocal artistry in one evening.
The Christmas Night Opera Gala also continues the remarkable personal and artistic journey of its producer, Eugene Wintour-Irverstag. At the age of 22, he became the youngest general producer of a state theatre in Russia, assuming a leadership role at Moscow's renowned Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre. Over the course of his career, he has collaborated with leading artists and organizations across opera, classical music, theatre, and dance.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Wintour-Irverstag publicly opposed the war, was arrested, and subsequently left the country permanently, rebuilding his life and professional career in Europe. Today, he brings world-class artists and companies to major venues across Northern Europe and the United States. The inaugural Christmas Night Opera Gala at Carnegie Hall in December 2025 marked his U.S. producing debut.
“When we presented the first Christmas Night Opera Gala last year, my hope was not simply to create one beautiful evening, but to begin something that could return to New York year after year,” said Eugene Wintour-Irverstag, producer and founder of Wintour Performing Arts Incorporated. “To return to Carnegie Hall with another extraordinary group of artists feels very meaningful. I have spent my life bringing artists and audiences together, and after having to rebuild so much of my own life and work, I do not take for granted the opportunity to continue doing that here.”
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