The Atlanta Opera Reveals 2026-2027 Season

The Atlanta Opera will embark on its 47th season in 2026-27, marking its final season before moving into the Molly Blank Center for Opera and the Arts. Now under construction, this new home will further the company's boundary-breaking mission.

The new season offers seven productions ranging from war stories and psychological dramas to spiritual journeys with a through-line of ultimate redemption through love. The fall productions explore the kind of brotherly love that recognizes an enemy's humanity in wartime.

The mainstage season opens with Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. General & Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun's iconic production of Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell's Silent Night, which returns to Atlanta for the first time in ten years, telling a story about the Christmas truce of 1914 that saw enemy combatants declare a momentary cease-fire and come together in recognition of commonality despite the violent conflict that otherwise consumed them (Nov 7–15).

The same general story is told through a different genre in December as part of the critically acclaimed Molly Blank Discoveries Series, which presents Peter Rothstein's a capella musical All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914 for 20 performances in a co-production with Atlanta's Theatrical Outfit in that company's Balzer Theater.

In the winter and spring, the mainstage season continues with Bizet's Carmen, directed by Brenna Corner and starring Rihab Chaieb (Jan 30–Feb 7); and Zvulun's productions of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman, starring three-time Grammy winner Ryan Speedo Green as the Dutchman and Wendy Bryn Harmer as Senta (March 13–21), and Puccini's Tosca, with Monica Conesa in the title role (May 1–9).

As part of the NOW Festival in June 2027, the company will also present two additional productions at Morehouse College's Ray Charles Performing Arts Center: Rosenbaum and Li (Rose, Tree), winner of 2025's 96-Hour Opera Project, and Jubilee by NOW Festival Artistic Advisor Tazewell Thompson and Dianne Adams McDowell, a theatrical tribute to the Fisk Jubilee Singers, an African American a cappella ensemble born on the campus of Fisk University in the wake of the Civil War. This traversal through multiple genres, production styles, and venues reflects The Atlanta Opera's commitment to expanding the definition of what opera can be.

Zvulun comments: “In recent years, Atlanta has shown that opera can live comfortably on a grand stage, in a black-box theater, in a circus tent, in an abandoned warehouse, and on a streaming platform. The 2026–27 season goes even further in breaking the boundaries of opera by bringing together grand classics, a modern Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, an off-Broadway a cappella work, and the great tradition of American spirituals – all wrestling with war, conflict, and the possibility of redemption through love. In this last season before we move into our new home – a space designed to embody our boundary-breaking mission by placing different works and genres side by side and showcasing the dialogue between multidisciplinary art forms – we wanted to offer Atlanta a bold statement of what opera can be. Across Silent Night, Carmen, The Flying Dutchman, Tosca, All is Calm at Theatrical Outfit, and Jubilee and Rosenbaum and Li (Rose, Tree) as part of the NOW Festival, we are telling one sweeping story about how human beings confront violence and oppression, and how love, faith, and community can redeem those wounds. Our ongoing collaboration with Theatrical Outfit on All is Calm also continues our partnerships with leading Atlanta theaters, following last year's groundbreaking Fiddler on the Roof.”

In the spirit of 2024's “Bohème Project,” which featured traditional and updated stagings of Puccini's opera along with the modern perspective of Jonathan Larson's Rent, this fall The Atlanta Opera devotes both mainstage Discoveries Series productions to different tellings of another resonant story: the famous Christmas truce of 1914, when in the middle of World War I German, French, and Scottish soldiers climbed out of the trenches, exchanged cigarettes and whisky, sang carols, and even played an impromptu soccer match together in No Man's Land before returning to the brutal realities of war. This moment of peace and humanity amidst one of history's most violent conflicts has attracted multiple storytellers in different genres.

Zvulun's now-famous production of Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell's Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Silent Night has since been seen in a dozen major cities across the United States and Europe, becoming one of the defining stagings of this modern classic. The production returns to The Atlanta Opera this fall after an absence of ten years, during which it has had an enviable run of successes. A Wexford Festival/Glimmerglass co-production that won the Irish Times award for Best Opera after premiering at the Wexford Festival in 2014, the production was first seen in Atlanta in 2016, with subsequent productions at Glimmerglass, the Kennedy Center, Austin Opera, Utah Opera, and Florida Grand Opera. Future productions are slated for Opera Carolina and elsewhere. Zvulun's staging returns to Atlanta for a November run featuring tenor Kameron Lopreore, who debuted in the role of German tenor Nikolaus Sprink in the Florida Grand Opera production; soprano Sylvia D'Eramo and baritone Aleksey Bogdanov, both of whom are featured in the current season's Götterdämmerung; and baritone Luke Sutliff, a top prize winner of the Metropolitan Opera's 2025 Laffont Competition who sings the Count in The Atlanta Opera's The Marriage of Figaro this spring. On the podium will be TAO Principal Conductor Iván López Reynoso, who leads three of the company's four mainstage productions this season (Nov 7–15).

This season's Molly Blank Discoveries Series features a December production of Peter Rothstein's a cappella musical All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914, which will be co-produced with Atlanta's Theatrical Outfit in a 20-performance run at the company's Balzer Theater. Created as a radio musical docudrama for Minnesota Public Radio in 2007, the show has since toured the U.S. as a stage production. The text is taken from a wide range of sources, including letters, journals, official war documents, poetry, grave stone inscriptions, and an old radio broadcast. It premiered off-Broadway in 2018, winning a 2019 New York Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience. The critic for TheaterMania declared it to be “hands down, the most emotionally moving Christmas show I've ever seen,” while The New York Times described it as “a beautiful musical recounting of a World War I cease-fire of gifts, poetry, and melody.” The Atlanta production will be directed by Matt Torney, Artistic Director of Theatrical Outfit, bringing together the creative strengths of both institutions in an intimate, actor-driven staging (Dec 2026).

The Atlanta Opera's Molly Blank Discoveries Series brings opera to new audiences with performances of contemporary and lesser-known works that are both bold and intimate. Held in unique venues across the city, the series offers fresh, experimental takes on opera, spotlighting emerging talent and exploring challenging themes and redefining what opera can be in the 21st century. Atlanta's Theatrical Outfit, co-producer of this season's All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914, is the second-oldest non-profit professional theater in Atlanta, with a mission to produce world-class theatre that starts the conversations that matter, guided by a deep love for the city  and a commitment to Atlanta's myriad artists. The company's unique voice promotes discussion, reflection, and public discourse.  

The Atlanta Opera's 2026-27 mainstage season continues with three productions of imposing visual and musical scale, featuring a roster of internationally acclaimed singers. In the winter is a production of Bizet's Carmen, directed by Brenna Corner, the Artistic Director of Canada's Pacific Opera Victoria and former resident director of The Atlanta Opera Studio Artist Program, who foregrounds the opera's raw volatility and tragic inevitability. Leading a stupendous cast is Tunisian-Canadian mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb, First Prize winner of the Gerda Lissner International Vocal Competition in 2016 and Grand Prize winner of the George London Foundation in 2018. After singing Cherubino in the present season's production of The Marriage of Figaro, she returns to The Atlanta Opera joined by Joshua Guerrero as Don Jose, Łukasz Goliński as Escamillo, and Andrea Carroll as Micaela (Jan 30–Feb 7).

Tomer Zvulun's production of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman – like his production of Silent Night – has had multiple high-profile productions since debuting at The Atlanta Opera in 2017. A co-production with Cincinnati Opera and Houston Grand Opera, it was mounted by those companies in 2018 and 2019 respectively. This season's revival – on the heels of the company's first complete Ring cycle over the last four seasons – stars three-time Grammy-winning bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green in the title role, with Wendy Bryn Harmer as Senta, and Andrew Potter as Daland. TAO Principal Conductor Iván López Reynoso is once again on the podium, shaping the opera's cathartic score as it journeys from damnation toward a possible redemption (March 13–21).

Zvulun also directs the final production of the season, Puccini's Tosca, which was the first opera he directed as the company's newly appointed General and Artistic Director in 2013. Zvulun's new production of the opera stars Cuban American soprano Monica Conesa in the title role, with Venezuelan tenor Jorge Puerta as Cavaradossi and Italian baritone Ernesto Petti as Scarpia, with Iván López Reynoso completing his trio of mainstage assignments on the podium (May 1–9).

The 2027 NOW Festival – inaugurated during the present season to contain the 96-Hour Opera Project competition showcase, along with developmental workshops and incubator performances of works by past competition winners – will present two productions: the opera Rosenbaum and Li (Rose, Tree), developed from the winning scene in the 2025 96-Hour Opera Project by composer Dina Pruzhansky and librettist Hai-Ting Chinn, and festival Artistic Advisor Tazewell Thompson's Jubilee, with vocal arrangements and music direction by Dianne Adams McDowell. Directed by Thompson himself, Jubilee is an a cappella musical that tells the story of the world-renowned Fisk Jubilee Singers. The group was founded at Fisk University, which opened in Nashville in 1866 as the first American university to offer a liberal arts education to “young men and women irrespective of color” but within a few years was in dire financial straits. Fisk treasurer and music professor George L. White responded to the crisis by forming a nine-member choral ensemble of students and taking it on tour to earn money for the University. Within a few years the group was performing at the White House for President Ulysses S. Grant, and the following year they toured Europe for the first time, during which a group portrait was commissioned for them by Queen Victoria as a gift from England. Jubilee's score includes uplifting spirituals and hymns including “Wade in the Water,” “Ain't That Good News,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, and “Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen.” Both Rosenbaum and Li (Rose, Tree) and Thompson's Jubilee will be produced at Morehouse College, an iconic Atlanta HBCU, at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center.

The 96-Hour Opera Project competition pairs composers and librettists to write original ten-minute operas. Bringing their completed works to Atlanta, the creative teams are allowed 96 hours to rehearse and develop their productions with guidance from specialists in the field from June 10 through 13, 2026. On June 13, a public competition showcase will present the ten-minute operas at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center at Morehouse College where a winning team will be selected by a distinguished group of judges, who have included Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist Mark Campbell, award-winning actress and director Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, The New York Times bestselling author Andrea Davis Pinkney, and other experienced leaders in the industry. All selected participants will receive a $1000 honorarium. The Atlanta Opera presents the Antinori Grand Prize to the winning team – a $10,000 award and an Atlanta Opera commission for a new work to be produced and performed in an upcoming season as part of the annual NOW Festival.

Designed specifically for composers and librettists from historically underrepresented communities, the 96-Hour Opera Project competition is open to those who self-identify as part of a demographic that has been underrepresented in the creative pantheon of opera. The Atlanta Opera provides singing talent and a pianist as collaborators to bring the new works to life. The Atlanta Opera also provides story prompts, which will form the basis of the plot lines of the submitted works.