SF Opera Cast Change: Richard Strauss Concert

War Memorial Opera House and Veterans Building

Postcard from personal collection of Lisa Hirsch

Well, here's an interesting cast change: Adela Zaharia is ill and won't be able to sing in next Friday's all-Strauss concert by Eun Sun Kim and the SF Opera Orchestra.

The Brentano Lieder are also off the program. Instead, it'll be the Four Last Songs, sung by soprano Kathleen O'Mara. You have a chance to not only hear an up-and-coming young soprano, but if you were at SF Symphony earlier this month, you can compare and contrast conductor and soloist in the VLL.

Kim was electrifying in Elektra in June, and of course the VLL are different in every way but I'd expect this to be an excellent concert. I will miss it because I am reviewing SFS that night.

Here's the press release:

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (October 30, 2026) — Due to illness, soprano Adela Zaharia will be replaced by soprano Kathleen O’Mara as soloist for San Francisco Opera’s Strauss in Concert conducted by Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim on Friday, November 6 at the War Memorial Opera House. O’Mara will perform Strauss’ Four Last Songs in place of the previously scheduled Brentano Lieder.

 

Kathleen O’Mara was recently awarded 1st Prize at the 2025 Queen Sonja Singing Competition and 1st Prize and the Birgit Nilsson Prize at the 2024 Operalia Competition. She is a graduate of LA Opera’s Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program and is a 2024 recipient of the prestigious Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Foundation. O’Mara’s current season includes Micaëla (Carmen) and Liù (Turandot) at LA Opera and house debuts at Dallas Opera (Elsa in Lohengrin) and Santa Fe Opera (Liù). On the concert stage, O’Mara debuts with the Barcelona Symphony in Act I of Die Walküre conducted by Ludovic Morlot and makes her Carnegie Hall recital debut presented by The Juilliard School. Her engagements last season included her Edinburgh International Festival debut in Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied conducted by Donald Runnicles, the Oslo Philharmonic’s annual outdoor concert at The Palace Square, Metropolitan Opera (Donna Anna in Don Giovanni), Milan’s Teatro alla Scala (Helmwige in Die Walküre), Munich’s Bavarian State Opera (Fifth maidservant in Elektra) and Seattle Opera (Micaëla). A native of Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, O’Mara holds a Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School and a Bachelor of Music degree from Westminster Choir College.

 

Following sold-out concerts of symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven in 2024 and 2025, Maestro Kim and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra return to the War Memorial Opera House stage with an evening dedicated to the music of Richard Strauss. This one-night-only event includes the U.S. premiere of a new suite of music from Strauss’ opera Der Rosenkavalier; one of the composer’s early tone poems, Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks; and in what would become his songs of farewell, the Four Last Songs.

 

The program opens with Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, the 1895 tone poem that musically illustrates the irreverent adventures and demise of the trickster Till, a German folk hero. The Four Last Songs (1948), among the composer’s most profound and beautiful works, will be performed by soprano Kathleen O’Mara.

 

After intermission, Maestro Kim and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra will present the U.S. premiere of Der Rosenkavalier Suite, a new arrangement by Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan and Czech arranger Tomáš Ille. The well-known Rosenkavalier Suite from the past century, thought to have been arranged by conductor Artur Rodzinski in 1944, emphasizes the waltz music in Strauss’ 1911 opera but bears little relation to its dramatic plot. At 35 minutes in duration, Jordan and Ille’s new suite, commissioned by Radio France and premiered in 2021, is longer than the older Rosenkavalier Suite and utilizes the colors of the orchestra to relate the story of Strauss’ beloved romantic comedy.

 

Throughout her tenure as San Francisco Opera’s Music Director, Eun Sun Kim has led a wide repertoire of opera and concert works, including the world premiere of John Adams’ Antony and Cleopatra, Richard Wagner’s Parsifal, Giuseppe Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fidelio and his Ninth and Fifth Symphonies. In 2026, Maestro Kim has conducted the music of Richard Strauss, including Ariadne auf Naxos in Berlin, along with Elektra with San Francisco Opera. The San Francisco Chronicle said of Elektra, “Kim leads with propulsion and breathtaking control over the immense orchestra—Strauss never met an instrument he couldn’t stuff into a score—and miraculously retains clarity even in the loudest passages.” During San Francisco Opera’s current season, Maestro Kim also conducts Massenet’s French repertoire gem Manon (October 15–November 1) and Wagner’s Das Rheingold (May 29–June 22, 2027), the latter a prelude to complete cycles of Wagner’s Ring in Summer 2028.