Mitridate, re di Ponto
Company Premiere
New Production
Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto by Vittorio Amedeo Cigna-Santi
September 9, 10, 13, 2026
Academy of Music
Performed in Italian with English supertitles
Approximately 3 hours including one intermission
  

Mitridate, re di Ponto – an early opera seria triumph for composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, completed when he was just 14 years old – brings a dramatic story with virtuosic arias and duets, into an onstage world that underscores the timeless nature of absolute power, fraught family dynamics, and political gamesmanship.

Celebrated tenor Lawrence Brownlee, whose past decade with Opera Philadelphia has included iconic performances in the world premiere of Daniel Schnyder and Bridgette Wimberly’s opera Charlie Parker’s Yardbird (2015) and the company premiere of Rossini’s Otello (2022), stars in the title role. General Director Anthony Roth Costanzo portrays his eldest son, Farnace, with soprano Lauren Snouffer as Aspasia, the woman pledged to the king but loved by both of his sons. This marks an Academy of Music stage reunion for Costanzo and Snouffer, who headlined the critically acclaimed company premiere of George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s Written on Skin in 2018.

“I’m thrilled to return to Opera Philadelphia to take on the title role of Mitridate for the second time,” Brownlee said. “It’s a remarkable work, and I’m excited to rediscover it with such a phenomenal cast. This production is especially meaningful to me because it reflects the unique partnership I share with the company. As a member of the Board of Directors, I have the privilege of performing alongside our General Director, Anthony Roth Costanzo, under the leadership of our Music Director, my dear friend and colleague Corrado Rovaris. Collaborations like this embody the spirit of Opera Philadelphia and make the experience all the more special.”

With a libretto by Vittorio Amedeo Cigna-Santi, adapted from Jean Racine’s play, Mitridate delves into ambition, loyalty, betrayal, and conflict—timeless dimensions of human experience that remain as resonant today as at its 1770 premiere. Composed when Mozart was just 14, the opera reveals an extraordinary command of dramatic pacing, combining youthful energy with striking elegance and emotional depth. Celebrated in its initial run and recognized as the composer’s first major operatic achievement, Mitridate later fell into obscurity before being rediscovered and revived in the 20th century.

Soprano Meredith Wohlgemuth makes her company debut as Sifare, with soprano Nola Richardson debuting as Ismene and mezzo-soprano Sarah Coit debuting as Arbate. Tenor Minghao Liu, who debuted as Belfiore in Il viaggio a Reims in 2025, returns in the role of Marzio.

Emma Griffin, the acclaimed theater and opera director and managing artistic director of Mannes Opera at the New School’s College of Performing Arts, makes her Opera Philadelphia debut directing the production. Judy & Peter Leone Music Director Corrado Rovaris leads the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra.

Suddenly Last Summer
Philadelphia Premiere
Music by Courtney Bryan
Libretto by Gideon Lester and Daniel Fish, based on the play by Tennessee Williams
October 22, 23, 25, 2026
Forrest Theatre
Performed in English with English supertitles
Approximately 90 minutes with no intermission
A co-commission and co-production with Fisher Center LAB
Presented by special arrangement with The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee

The feverish Tennessee Williams-based Suddenly Last Summer brings 2023 MacArthur Fellow and “pianist and composer of panoramic interests” (The New York Times) Courtney Bryan to Opera Philadelphia for her first-ever opera, bringing radiant new life to Williams’s study of a confrontation between truth and power.

Bryan began developing Suddenly Last Summer during her tenure as an Opera Philadelphia Composer in Residence from 2022 to 2024. “The first 20th-century opera I saw, while still in high school, was André Previn and Philip Littell’s setting of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, and it left a lasting impression, seeing how opera with contemporary language could complement the storytelling of such a powerful play,” Bryan said. “I am drawn to the complex worlds that Williams creates and look forward to writing music that draws upon the beauty and terror in this Southern Gothic story. The setting of the play in my city of New Orleans and the various themes of wealth and power, of sexuality and vulnerability, and the blurring of reality and fiction and of sanity and insanity are compelling to me.”

Gideon Lester and Tony-winning director Daniel Fish (lauded for his creative Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, which won the 2019 Tony Award for Best Musical Revival) have teamed up to pen its libretto, with Fish directing. Nathan Koci, who was music director on Fish’s Oklahoma! and most recently served as music director for the first national tour of Anäis Mitchell’s Tony Award-winning folk musical Hadestown, makes his Opera Philadelphia debut as conductor and music supervisor.  Adapted from Williams’ one-act Southern Gothic drama set in New Orleans (Bryan’s hometown), the opera tells the story of the wealthy Venable family and a young woman’s struggle to speak (or in this case sing) truth to power.

The poet Sebastian Venable died mysteriously in Spain last summer. His cousin Catharine—sung by Mikaela Bennett—was with him and has since returned to New Orleans, where she obsessively recounts the story of his death. Now, Sebastian’s mother is attempting to bribe a doctor to lobotomize her niece and cut the story from her memory forever.

The cast is led by Bennett as Catharine Holly, with additional casting to be announced. The creative team includes revival director Mikhaela Mahony, Marsha Ginsberg (Scenic Design), Terese Wadden (Costume Design), Stacey Derossier (Lighting Design), and Joshua Thorson (Projection Design).

Bryan is a 2023 MacArthur Fellow and currently serves as composer-in-residence with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Recent works include DREAMING (Freedom Sounds), performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble at New York’s Kaufman Music Center; Visual Rhythms, a new art-inspired orchestral piece for Jacksonville Symphony; House of Pianos, which Bryan premiered in 2023 with the LA Phil New Music Group (chamber ensemble version) and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (full orchestra version); and Gathering Song (libretto by Tazewell Thompson), composed for bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green and the New York Philharmonic.

Fish is a New York-based director who makes work across the boundaries of theater, film, and opera. He draws on a broad range of forms and subject matter, including plays, film scripts, contemporary fiction, essays, and found audio. His acclaimed 2019 production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! transferred to Broadway from St. Ann’s Warehouse, following its premiere at the Fisher Center at Bard, and won the Tony Award for Best Musical Revival. The production then transferred to London’s West End, where it won the Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival. Lester is Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the Fisher Center at Bard. As a writer for the stage, his translations include Moliere’s Dom Juan, The Island of Slaves and The Dispute by Marivaux, Büchner’s Woyzeck, and Brecht’s Mother Courage, and his adaptations include Kafka’s Amerika, Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, and Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita.

Suddenly Last Summer was co-commissioned by Fisher Center LAB and Opera Philadelphia and received its world premiere at the Fisher Center at Bard in June 2026. Fisher Center LAB is funded by the Lucille Lortel Foundation and the Fisher Center’s Artistic Innovation Fund, with lead support from Rebecca Gold Milikowsky and additional funding from The William and Lia G. Poorvu Family Foundation. Major development support for Suddenly Last Summer has been received from the Fisher Center’s Hope Commissions Fund, generously endowed by the Civis Foundation and Bard College. Additional commissioning support was provided by the Howard & Sarah D. Solomon Foundation. The commissioning of Courtney Bryan received funding from OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Women Composers program, supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. Suddenly Last Summer was developed with residency support from the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).

Let ‘Em Eat Cake
Company Premiere
New Production
Music & Lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin
Book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind
Directed by Zack Winokur
Performed in English with English supertitles
January 29, 30, 31, 2027
Academy of Music
Approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes with one intermission

Opera Philadelphia revives the Gershwins’ most overlooked work, a biting satire about an American President who refuses to accept a reelection loss and stages a fascist coup and a redesign of the White House.

Let ’Em Eat Cake is a sharply satirical dystopian farce that takes aim at targets ranging from totalitarianism to high society and fashion culture. Featuring one of the Gershwin brothers’ most sophisticated and inventive scores, the work stands as a bold artistic achievement. A 1933 follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize–winning Of Thee I Sing, Let ’Em Eat Cake offers a darker, more nuanced exploration of politics and American life, expanding on its predecessor’s themes with greater complexity and edge.

In this tuneful but edgy satire, President Wintergreen is defeated for reelection, and he and his former Vice President, Alexander Throttlebottom, form an incipient fascist movement to take over the government. They succeed, and Wintergreen decides the White House should look different, and that perhaps the Supreme Court would be best utilized as a baseball team, having to settle various scores with a game.

“It’s a thrill to revisit this extraordinarily prescient piece, and hard to believe that it might be even more relevant today than it was when it premiered,” said director Zack Winokur. “I hope the sharp humor of George S. Kaufman’s story, like a good political cartoon, can offer audiences a few hours of relief, while the lush score might reveal something new to all of us about our country, both its dangers and its promise."

Critics were not kind to Let ’Em Eat Cake when it premiered, and the dark humor of the show put off audiences who had laughed at the more gentle Of Thee I Sing. The ongoing economic depression in the United States, coupled with mounting political uncertainty in Europe—including Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Germany’s chancellor in January 1933—likely also contributed to the muted response. “American audiences simply didn’t like a story about America being taken over by fascists,” said The National Review in a 2019 reflection. “The jokes were funny, but the idea wasn’t — it made Americans uneasy.”

Let ‘Em Eat Cake opened on October 21, 1933, and ran 90 performances. It had not been revived in a major forum until the Brooklyn Academy of Music presented a concert version in 1986, in conjunction with Of Thee I Sing. It has been presented in several concert versions since then, but no major stage revival has been produced in the U.S. As this blistering revival takes the stage, the real presidential primaries for a 2028 election will kick into gear, making this century-old piece nothing if not timely.

Recognized as one of the most innovative and exciting talents working in theater and opera today, Winokur has been described as “at the vanguard of his generation’s artistic leaders” (New York Times). He is co-founder and Artistic Director of AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company) as well as Producing Artistic Director of Little Island.

Judy & Peter Leone Music Director Corrado Rovaris leads the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra, with Elizabeth Braden leading the voices of the Opera Philadelphia Chorus.  

Let ‘Em Eat Cake is presented by special arrangement with Concord Theatricals Corp. www.concordtheatricals.com

Aida
New Production
Music by Giuseppe Verdi
Libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni
April 17, 20, 23, 25, 2027
Academy of Music
A new co-production with Houston Grand Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and LA Opera
Performed in Italian with English supertitles
Runtime is 2 hours and 45 minutes, including one 20-minute intermission

For the first time since 2005, Aida comes home to the Academy of Music, an opera house where Verdi’s masterpiece enjoys a rich legacy. Verdi’s monumental masterwork returns in a visionary and lush new co-production from director Kaneza Schaal and artist Christopher Myers in their Opera Philadelphia debuts.

Drawing from histories, forms, and traditions from anywhere the African Diaspora collided with other peoples, Schaal’s staging blooms with colors, flowers, and dance to share the opera’s story of love, betrayal, and sacrifice, set to an iconic score that represents the pinnacle of the Romantic Italian style. Powerhouse soprano Tiffany Townsend makes her role debut as the enslaved Ethiopian woman Aida, with leading tenor Jonathan Burton in his company debut as her love, Egyptian military commander Radamès. Renowned bass-baritone Alfred Walker makes his company debut as Aida’s father, Amonasro, and mezzo-soprano Aubrey Odle makes her company debut as the revenge-bent Amneris. Also joining the production are bass Patrick Guetti as Ramphis, soprano Katerina Burton in her company debut as the High Priestess, and bass-baritone Kevin Short as the King of Egypt.

“We wade through the residue of empire every day, in the newspapers and in our closets. The questions of who we are as we meet and absorb an ‘other’ are central to Aida and form the background of my own inquiry into the work,” said Schaal, a New York City based artist working in theater, opera, and film. “Aida originally was born of nations trying to send a message to themselves about who they were and who they wanted to be. It mixed metaphors, rewrote mythologies, and asked questions about what it means when one culture meets another, in war or in love. I am interested in how this music helps us fathom today's world.”

Schaal’s work has shown in divergent contexts, from New York City art galleries to courtyards in Vietnam, East African amphitheaters, European opera houses, to USA public housing, and rural auditoriums in the UAE. By creating art that speaks many formal, cultural, historical, aesthetic, and experiential languages she seeks an expanding audience. Her many honors include a 2025 Doris Duke Artist Award, 2024 LA Opera Stern Artist Award, 2023 Project & Evolving Democracy Fellowship, and 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship. Myers is an artist and writer who lives in New York. While he is widely acclaimed for his work with literature for young people, he is also an accomplished fine artist who has lectured and exhibited internationally. He has worked with traditional shadow puppet makers in Jogjakarta, silversmiths in Khartoum, conceptual video artists in Vietnam, young musicians in New Orleans, woodcarvers in Accra, weavers in Luxor and many other artists.

Their creative team includes set designer Amy Rubin, costume designer Charlese Antoinette, lighting designer Pablo Santiago, and projection & video designer Joshua Higgason. Judy & Peter Leone Music Director Corrado Rovaris leads the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra, with Elizabeth Braden leading the voices of the Opera Philadelphia Chorus.  

Sitcom
World Premiere 
Music by Luke Styles
Libretto by Alan McKendrick
May 19, 21, 22, 23, 2027
Suzanne Roberts Theatre
Performed in English with English supertitles
Runtime is 2 hours and 20 minutes, with one 20-minute intermission

 “For more than eight decades, the sitcom has both marked the times and provided a balm against them.” – Rolling Stone

An art form that first entered homes in the 1950s and was perfected by legendary characters like Ralph Kramden, George Jefferson, Mary Richards, Selina Meyer, and Homer J. Simpson, the television sitcom has helped to define modern storytelling by centering characters in workplaces, families, school settings, and friends’ apartments or favorite coffeehouses.

A multi-act structure to fit commercial breaks, featuring a main “A-story” and at least one subplot (“B-story”) that diversifies the narrative and gives supporting characters roles, sitcom episodes often involve setting up a protagonist's goal and obstacles, introducing complications, leading to a climax where they try to succeed, and concluding with a resolution or return to normalcy before the next episode.

Composer Luke Styles and librettist Alan McKendrick were fascinated by the idea of adopting this structure for the operatic stage, developing the piece with Opera Philadelphia over the past decade. The result of their experimental journey is the neo-baroque comic chamber opera Sitcom, which receives its world premiere at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre. As in classic television sitcoms, the opera’s four main characters are delightfully trapped in the eternal present of their own worlds. Conceived as two acts containing four 30-minute “episodes,” each act contains a “to be continued” story that takes the characters Max, Bettina, Joan, and Vendetta on hugely transformative journeys, but crucially returns each of them to their status quo for the beginning of the next episode.

“Sitcom is an opera that embraces comedy and the classic sitcom tropes of the ‘90s, from Seinfeld to The Simpsons. This was what I grew up on and what fed into my notions of narrative and humour now distilled into my operatic voice,” Styles said. “Fuse this with a love of the emotional range and directness of baroque opera, transformed through a contemporary music voice and you have the opera Sitcom. I’m thrilled that Opera Philadelphia has supported the development of this opera and have embraced its exuberance and humour to bring it to the world.”

Styles is a British Australian composer whose work is performed regularly throughout the world. He was the first Glyndebourne Young Composer-in-Residence, the first Composer-in-Residence at the Foundling Museum since Handel, and the 2022 British Council Musician-in-Residence to Brazil. He is the artistic director of the Deal Festival.  His opera Ned Kelly premiered to critical acclaim at the 2019 Perth Festival, and his opera Awakening Shadow premiered in 2021 at the Cheltenham Music Festival, Presteigne Festival and received a second production by Sydney Chamber Opera in 2022. His 2024 opera Fault Lines toured Cornwall with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra with a sold-out run of shows.

McKendrick is a writer and director working across film, and opera. He is currently Playwrights’ Studio Scotland Writer-In-Residence for Untitled Projects, for whom he recently adapted and directed a ‘fullbore literary arthouse crazyfest’ staging of Alexander Trocchi’s cult novel, Cain’s Book. He wrote the libretto to Styles’ opera Hope Dies Hard in His House.

Sitcom casting will be announced at a later date.

Save the Date: Opera Philadelphia’s 2026-2027 Gala on April 24, 2027
Opera Philadelphia invites you to mark your calendar for a celebration of peace and hope through the transformative power of music. On April 24, 2027, Opera Philadelphia’s annual Gala takes on special significance as we partner with the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker peace and justice organization, to present a landmark evening at the Academy of Music honoring AFSC’s 110th anniversary and the 80th anniversary of its Nobel Peace Prize with a powerful program of conversation and music celebrating peace, justice, and community. The concert will be followed by a spectacular gala dinner. More information to come at operaphila.org/gala.