Lyric Opera Of Kansas City Announces 2024-2025 Season

Lyric Opera of Kansashas announced its 2024–2025 season. The season includes four mainstage productions at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, The Brightness of Light, a concert with Renée Fleming and Rod Gilfry, The Barber of Seville, Cruzar la cara de la Luna, and Turandot. High-resolution photos can be found here. 

The 2024–2025 season begins with an extraordinary presentation of the Pulitzer Prize winner Kevin Puts' masterpiece, The Brightness of Light, featuring the exceptional Renée Fleming and Rod Gilfry and based on love letters between legendary painter Georgia O'Keeffe and her husband, the celebrated photographer Alfred Stieglitz. We continue the magic with Rossini's timeless comic opera, The Barber of Seville, a perennial favorite celebrated for its comedic brilliance.

In 2025, the Lyric is proud to present the Kansas City premiere of the groundbreaking mariachi opera, José “Pepe” Martínez's and Leonard Foglia's Cruzar la cara de la Luna, seamlessly weaving themes of love, family, and place. Cruzar la cara de la Luna will be accompanied by the Grammy-Award winning mariachi band Mariachi los Camperos. The other three shows will be accompanied by the Kansas City Symphony. 

Finally, the season concludes with Puccini's grandest opera, Turandot. Not seen since the Lyric Opera's debut season at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts which left audiences breathless, this production is sure to be a crowd-pleaser. 

Sandler stated, “We are thrilled to announce the 2024–2025 season, full of wonderful stories, artists, and creative talents who will bring the best of opera to Kansas City. Our season opener and Kansas City premiere, The Brightness of Light, welcomes the incomparable Renée Fleming and Rod Gilfry to the Kauffman Center for an extraordinary musical event. Who doesn't love Rossini's effervescent romantic comedy, The Barber of Seville? Continuing the season is a very special Kansas City premiere of Cruzar la cara de la Luna. The first-ever mariachi opera, Cruzar, tells the timely and timeless story of families and borders, real and imagined, and is not to be missed. Completing the season is the return of the majestic opera, Turandot. One of the most popular operas of all time, this production delivers dazzling sets and costumes, beautiful music, and truly breathtaking singing.”

She continued, “I know our audiences have come to expect the highest-quality productions. To that end, we have had to make the very difficult decision to perform each production over one weekend while maintaining our Friday, Saturday, and Sunday subscriptions. We are committed to presenting the best talent and the highest-quality productions while being sound fiscal stewards of this very beautiful and expensive art form.”

2024–2025 Season

The Brightness of Light 

Composed by Pulitzer Prize winner Kevin Puts and based on letters between Georgia O'Keeffe and her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, this innovative new work is a love letter of its own. Like any creative endeavor, marriage is a collaborative work in progress—a journey in which the end isn't always what we imagined when we started. Against projections of O'Keeffe's floral figments, the letters paint the shifting shape of love over decades. Alongside Stieglitz's candid compositions, we sense the fleeting fragility of the moment and our desperation to make it last a little longer. Painting in layers, Puts' song cycle gives each letter new life, connecting contrasting ways of seeing the world. From the deserts of New Mexico to city streetscapes to roads less traveled in between, we see complementary visions for what life and art could be. 

Note: This is a semi-staged concert with projections; the second half will consist of opera and Broadway hits specially selected by Fleming and Gilfry for Lyric Opera audiences.

The Brightness of Light (2019)

 

Composer: Kevin Puts 

Text excerpts from the letters by Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz used and reprinted by permission of the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. All rights reserved.

Sung in English with English subtitles

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts (1601 Broadway, Kansas City, MO 64108)

• Friday, September 27, 2024 at 7:30 pm

• Sunday, September 29, 2024 at 2:00 p

The Barber of Seville 

 

Rossini's RomCom romp follows hopeless romantic Count Almaviva through a plot that unfolds like an operatic obstacle course. With the help of Figaro, a former servant turned barber, Almaviva attempts to run off with his true love, Rosina, before her soon-to-be forced marriage to the scheming Dr. Bartolo. What starts as a simple plan becomes an elaborate comedy of errors with as many twists and turns as there are laughs. Rossini complements the romantic antics with iconic songs stacked like an “Opera's Greatest Hits” playlist full of melodies so beguiling they've found their way into every area of pop culture imaginable. Even first-time operagoers will spend the night exclaiming, “Hey, that's that one song from that one thing!”

The Barber of Seville (1816)

Composer: Giacomo Rossini
Librettist: Cesare Sterbini 

Sung in Italian with English subtitles 

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts (1601 Broadway, Kansas City, MO 64108)

• Friday, November 15, 2024 at 7:30 pm

• Saturday, November 16, 2024 at 7:30 pm

• Sunday, November 17, 2024 at 2 pm 

Cruzar la cara de la Luna 

 

The first of its kind ever written, this mariachi opera by Jose “Pepe” Martinez and Leonard Foglia marries two musical worlds with one thing in common: each finds its fullest voice in the telling of moving tales, and Cruzar is no exception. After leaving his wife and son in Mexico to find work in the United States, Laurentino is torn between distance and duty. Decades later, and with days to live, he looks back on how the choices he made became the secrets he kept, with consequences that will redefine what it means to be a family. With sorrowful serenades, Cruzar creates a seamless musical merger that spans the distance of its cultural differences with sublimely bittersweet songs that make full use of their enhanced ability to take an emotional toll. Grammy-award-winning mariachi band Mariachi los Camperos will perform with Lyric Opera of Kansas City in this production. 

Cruzar la cara de la Luna (2010)

Music: José “Pepe” Martínez

Lyrics: Leonard Foglia and José “Pepe” Martínez

Book: Leonard Foglia

Sung in Spanish and English with English subtitles 

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts (1601 Broadway, Kansas City, MO 64108)

• Friday, March 7, 2025 at 7:30 pm

• Saturday, March 8, 2025 at 7:30 pm

• Sunday, March 9, 2025 at 2:00 pm

Turandot 

To win the vengeful Princess Turandot's hand in marriage, Prince Calaf must first solve three riddles. But, if he answers one of them incorrectly, he'll be put to death. No, it's not a new reality show. It's Puccini's Turandot, and the frequently fatal questions are just the beginning. When the prince passes the test, the princess balks at holding up her side of the bargain. To give her an out and himself another shot, he offers her an intriguing riddle of his own: if she can guess his name by dawn, she'll be off the hook, and he'll be on the chopping block. Is one night enough to soften her scorn? Amidst his unmistakable melodies and trademark twists, Puccini draws inspiration from instruments and elements of the opera's setting in ancient China and gives us his final, flawless love story.

Turandot (1926)

Composer: Giacomo Puccini

Librettists: Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni 

Sung in Italian with English subtitles 

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts (1601 Broadway, Kansas City, MO 64108)

• Friday, May 2, 2025 at 7:30 pm

• Saturday, May 3, 2025 at 7:30 pm

• Sunday, May 4, 2025 at 2:00 pm

Community Engagement

 

Community Conversations

Community Conversations uses opera to discover our shared humanity, on and off the stage. We invite the culturally curious to explore the “here and now” implications of productions in a series of free events featuring live music and stimulating conversation. No prior opera knowledge needed!

Opera Dives Deep

This free series provides audiences with fresh insights from regional scholars and industry professionals to enrich appreciation and understanding of the operas in our season. Both established opera goers and curious newcomers alike are sure to make discoveries.

Pre-Opera Talks

Do you have tickets to see an opera at the Kauffman Center? Come one hour early to learn about the who, what, where, when, and why of the production you're about to see.

For the latest updates, please visit Lyric Opera Learning..

Subscriber and Single Ticket Information 

Subscriptions for the 2024–2025 season are 4-show packages containing The Brightness of Light, a concert with Renée Fleming and Rod Gilfry, The Barber of Seville, Cruzar la cara de la Luna, and Turandot.

Subscribers save 20% off single ticket prices and can access seats before the general public. Subscribers received early renewal information on February 20 by email, and subscription renewal packets will be mailed in early April 2024. Individual opera tickets will go on sale mid-July 2024.

Season ticket packages range from $100 to $652. For ticket information, visit kcopera.org or contact Lyric Opera Ticketing and Patron Services at (816) 471-7344. 

About Lyric Opera of Kansas City

Established in 1958, Lyric Opera of Kansas City is one of the world's premier regional opera companies and brings high-quality live operatic performances to the Kansas City region. Renowned for its dedication to excellence, Lyric Opera presents a diverse repertoire featuring original language productions from the traditional opera canon alongside contemporary and American operas. Lyric Opera is committed to lifelong learning through robust education, family, and community engagement programming. Through innovative initiatives and commissions, these programs deepen humanistic connections, artistic literacy, and social-emotional learning. Lyric Opera of Kansas City remains an integral part of the cultural fabric of Kansas City and the surrounding region.

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