Michael R. Jackson's COMPLICATIONS IN SUE Opera and More Set for Philadelphia Opera 2025/26 Season

Opera Philadelphia has revealed the lineup for its upcoming 2025-2026 Season. February brings the World Premiere of Complications in Sue to the Academy of Music for four performances.

This new opera unfolds in 10 vignettes by Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning playwright Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) in his first opera libretto. Each scene will take place in a different decade in the life of the main character, named Sue, performed by MacArthur Genius and cabaret icon Justin Vivian Bond.

With four opera singers playing different characters in her life, the music for each scene up to eight minutes in length will be created by a different composer, including Opera Philadelphia veterans Missy Mazzoli (Breaking the Waves, The Listeners), Rene Orth (10 Days in a Madhouse), and Nico Muhly (Dark Sisters), alongside Andy Akiho, Alistair Coleman, Nathalie Joachim, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Kamala Sankaram, Dan Schlosberg, and Errollyn Wallen. 

Rossini's final Italian theatrical work Il viaggio a Reims premiered 200 years ago to celebrate the coronation of Charles X. This ebullient satire of class, manners, and the timeless misery of long-distance travel makes its Opera Philadelphia premiere with four September performances at the Academy of Music. Damiano Michieletto's inventive production shifts the time and place to a present-day art museum on the cusp of a major exhibition opening. The company returns to the Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in December with three performances of The Seasons, an exploration of the connection between weather and emotion with a new story by playwright Sarah Ruhl that weaves together some of Antonio Vivaldi's most stirring arias with excerpts from his masterpiece The Four Seasons. Celebrated choreographer Pam Tanowitz, and Tony-winning set designer Mimi Lien brave the elements with a set formed largely from bubbles, created from dish soap in collaboration with MIT and Materials Technologist Jack Forman. The Seasons features countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo in his first Opera Philadelphia starring role since being named General Director & President. 

In his first commission for Opera Philadelphia, Gregory Spears, the New York-based composer works with director and event architect Jenny Koons to create a new work starring the Opera Philadelphia Chorus, based on the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty.” Inspired by the absurdist telling of Swiss wunderkind Robert Walser (1878–1956) in which Sleeping Beauty and her royal family are unhappy to be woken up, the opera questions what it means to be awake. 

The season concludes in May 2026 with the Opera's return to the Miller Theater for the Philadelphia Premiere of The Black Clown, based on the poetry of Langston Hughes. This music theater experience fuses vaudeville, gospel, opera, jazz, and spirituals to bring Hughes'  verse to life onstage to embody the evolving, divided soul of Black America. The production features co-creator Davóne Tines in the title role, alongside an ensemble of twelve performers and original music by Michael Schachter. 

The season will launch with a 50th Anniversary Gala, Vox Ex Machina, on Saturday, September 13 at the Academy of Music. In a concert of established and emerging stars, each singer's aria will become a physical painting in real time before the audience's eyes, harnessing bold new technology to marry music and visual art. In the winter of 2025, Opera Philadelphia partnered with Drexel University's ExCITe Center and artist and creative technologist Daniel Belquer to launch a course with the goal of creating a machine that could take variables such as pitch and volume from a singer's performance and paint a canvas in response to an aria as it unfolds. The audience will see these sonic visual representations materialize during this one-of a-kind concert, and the resulting artworks will be auctioned off at the gala which follows at Philadelphia's beloved Reading Terminal Market. Sponsorships are now on sale. Single tickets and performance-only tickets go on sale on Thursday, May 1 to Opera Pass holders and donors of $100 or more, and on Thursday, May 15 to the public. 

“For 50 years, Opera Philadelphia has made art at the highest level, and as this visionary company continues to honor tradition and innovate, we are passionate about charting a new path for opera,” said Costanzo. “Our 2025-2026 Season embraces everything that opera is and helps us envision what it can become. It's opera, but different. I invite both long-time opera lovers and first-time, opera-curious audiences to join us as we bring Pick Your Price back! We are excited to continue offering tickets for $11, or a higher price of your choosing, for every single performance of the season. An incredible 67% of single ticket buyers were first timers in the first year of this model, selling out every opera of this season. The audiences have spoken, and where there is demand, we want to provide supply.”

Subscription packages for the 2025-2026 Season go on sale on Thursday, April 3, at 10:00 a.m. at operaphila.org, or by calling 215.732.8400 (Monday through Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.).

Newly available this season is Opera Pass, which gains passholders advanced access to Opera Philadelphia's pioneering Pick Your Price initiative, in which tickets for every performance are available for $11 or a higher price of your choice. Opera Passes are now on sale for $11 a month or $111 a year. Opera Passholders will receive an exclusive Pick Your Price presale from Thursday, May 1 through Wednesday, May 14.