San Francisco Opera Announces 2028 Ring Casting

Die Walküre, Act 1

2018 San Francisco Opera Ring

Brandon Jovanovich (Siegmund) and Karita Mattila (Sieglinde)

Photo: Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera will revive Francesca Zambello's production of Der Ring des Nibelungen (Richard Wagner) in 2028, and they've announced full casting this week, almost a year after the initial announcement. Pricing is also available; subscribers and anyone who has donated at least $150 can apply for Ring tickets starting on October 13.

If you're not sure whether Wagner is for you, you can always get a June, 2027, subscription ticket to Das Rheingold, the prologue and shortest of the Ring operas. There are also numerous excellent Ring productions available on DVD or streaming. 

Seeing the Ring, in several productions and with several conductors, has been among the greatest theatrical / operatic experiences of my life. I am very much looking forward to hearing SFO music director Eun Sun Kim conduct the Ring; her Wagner to date has been superb. If you can swing it, I encourage you to go. (And if you have any thoughts about the cast, I welcome comments!)

SUMMER 2028 OPERA SEASON: DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN

 

CYCLE 1: June 13 (7:30 p.m.); June 14 (6 p.m.); June 16 (6 p.m.); June 18 (1 p.m.)

CYCLE 2: June 20 (7:30 p.m.); June 21 (6 p.m.); June 23 (6 p.m.); June 25 (1 p.m.)

CYCLE 3: June 27 (7:30 p.m.); June 28 (6 p.m.); June 30 (6 p.m.); July 2 (1 p.m.)

All cycle performances are presented on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday

 

Production:
Conductor	Eun Sun Kim
Director	Francesca Zambello
Set Designer	Michael Yeargan
Costume Designer	Catherine Zuber
Original Lighting Designer	Mark McCullough
Revival Lighting Designer	A.J. Guban
Original Projections	Jan Hartley
New Projections, Remounted by	S. Katy Tucker
Choreographer	Denni Sayers
Associate Director     (Das Rheingold, Siegried)	Denni Sayers
Associate Director     (Die Walküre, Götterdämmerung)	Christian Rath
Chorus Director	John Keene

 

Co-production with Washington National Opera

Sung in German with English supertitles

 

DAS RHEINGOLD by Richard Wagner

June 13 (7:30 p.m.), 20 (7:30 p.m.) and 27 (7:30 p.m.), 2028

 

Approximate running time:	2 hours, 35 minutes without intermission
World Premiere:	Munich; September 22, 1869
First SF Opera Performance:	November 1, 1935
Most Recent SF Opera Performance:	June 2018
Cast:
Wotan	Brian Mulligan
Loge	Brenton Ryan
Alberich	Falk Struckmann
Fricka	Judit Kutasi
Erda	Sadie Cheslak
Mime	Zhengyi Bai
Fasolt	Kwangchul Youn
Fafner	John Relyea
Froh	Christopher Sokolowski
Donner	Lauri Vasar
Woglinde	Sofia Gotch
Wellgunde	Laura Krumm
Flosshilde	Taylor Raven

 

San Francisco Opera Orchestra

 

 

DIE WALKÜRE by Richard Wagner

June 14 (6 p.m.), 21 (6 p.m.) and 28 (6 p.m.), 2028

 

Approximate running time:	4 hours, 30 minutes with two intermissions
World Premiere:	Munich; June 26, 1870
First SF Opera Performance:	November 4, 1935
Most Recent SF Opera Performance:	June 2018
Cast:
Brünnhilde	Tamara Wilson
Wotan	Brian Mulligan
Sieglinde	Julie Adams
Siegmund	Christopher Sokolowski
Fricka	Judit Kutasi
Hunding	Kwangchul Youn

 

San Francisco Opera Orchestra

 

 

SIEGFRIED by Richard Wagner

June 16 (6 p.m.), 23 (6 p.m.) and 30 (6 p.m.), 2028

 

Approximate running time:	5 hours with two intermissions
World Premiere:	Bayreuth; August 16, 1876
First SF Opera Performance:	November 6, 1935
Most Recent SF Opera Performance:	June 2018
Cast:
Siegfried	Simon O’Neill
Brünnhilde	Tamara Wilson
Mime	Zhengyi Bai
The Wanderer (Wotan)	Brian Mulligan
Alberich	Falk Struckmann
Fafner	John Relyea
Erda	Sadie Cheslak
Forest Bird	Sofia Gotch

 

San Francisco Opera Orchestra

 

 

GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG by Richard Wagner

June 18 (1 p.m.), 25 (1 p.m.) and July 2 (1 p.m.), 2028

 

Approximate running time:	5 hours, 15 minutes with two intermissions
World Premiere:	Bayreuth, August 17, 1876
First SF Opera Performance:	November 9, 1935
Most Recent SF Opera Performance:	June/July 2018
Cast:
Brünnhilde	Tamara Wilson
Siegfried	Simon O’Neill
Gunther	Lauri Vasar
Hagen	John Relyea
Waltraute	Annika Schlicht
Gutrune	Julie Adams
Alberich	Falk Struckmann
First Norn	Sadie Cheslak
Second Norn	Annika Schlicht
Third Norn	Mary Hoskins
Woglinde	Sofia Gotch
Wellgunde	Laura Krumm
Flosshilde	Taylor Raven

 

San Francisco Opera Orchestra and San Francisco Opera Chorus

  

The Greeks Knew about Catharsis: Elektra at the San Francisco Opera

Kyle Ketelsen (Orest) and Elena Pankratova (Elektra)

Photo: Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

Richard Strauss's Elektra is back at San Francisco Opera, in Keith Warner's idiosyncratic, yet fascinating and insightful, production that sets the opera in a museum and explores family trauma. Okay, yes, that's built into the story, but he takes it a few steps further, relating a modern woman's family trauma to what happened in the House of Atreus. Let me note that composer Anne Hege, whose first laptopera, The Furies, is based on the Elektra story, is giving the pre-performance talks; I attended and I was glad that I did.

This Elektra is among my favorite productions ever, and also one of the greatest and most interesting productions I've ever seen. It was first done at the company in 2017; I think that the blocking has changed very little since then, but note that I didn't visit the SF Opera Archive to take a look at video from the first bring-up. I will admit to missing Christine Goerke, a favorite singer, in the title role.

Elektra is a truly cathartic work, and so well done that I was holding back tears at both the final dress rehearsal and the first performance. 

Eun Sun Kim's conducting is utterly masterful from beginning to end. About my one complaint about 2017 was that I felt Henrik Nánási, excellent in everything else, was kind of slack in the first half-hour, only catching fire around Klytemnestra's entrance. Kim is incendiary and the orchestra magnificent from the first downbeat. It is amazing to hear what she can do with an orchestra.

At various times in the last year the thought "Wow, Eun Sun Kim was such a great hire" has run through my head, and this is more evidence that she was the right conductor for SFO. Somehow they found a music director who turns out to be outstanding in the Runnicles lane of gigantic German works. I can't wait for Der Ring des Nibelungen, coming in two years.

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV / Chronicle
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle.100% agreement with his comments on Christine Goerke.
• Gabe Meline, KQED. He's not wrong about the orchestra's starring role!
• Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box
• Harvey Steiman, Seen & Heard International
• Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
• Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center

 

The Best of 2025

Kang Wang as the title character

The Monkey King

San Francisco Opera

Photo: Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO

 

SFCV published the writers' collective opinions of the best performances of the year. The Bay Area list is here. My five choices were these:

• Esa-Pekka Salonen's Mahler 2
• Poiesis Quartet at Noe Music
• The Monkey King at San Francisco Opera
• Pivot Festival, Carla Kiehlstedt's 26 Little Deaths
• Tartuffe, Pocket Opera

It was a tough call. Here's the rest of my long list:

• La bohème at SFO; a seriously great run, beautifully directed, with two terrific casts.
• MTT 80, a deeply touching celebration of the man.
  
• Parsifal at SFO
• Rigoletto at SFO
• Bluebeard's Castle at Opera San José
• Turn of the Screw at SFCM, better staged and conducted than what I saw at Santa Fe over the summer.
• John Adams third piano concerto, After the Fall, at SFS. I couldn't include the concert on my short list because the second half was (&)%$)_@_ Carmina Burana.
• Dalia Stasevska at SFS, in the Thorvaldsdottir cello concerto and RWV's Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.
• Cabrillo Festival, Becoming
• Hello, Star at OP. Just a perfect 45 minutes of opera begging for a larger orchestra. A wonderful libretto, beautiful music, great direction on a tiny stage.
• Donald Runnicles and Irene Roberts at SFS

As you can see, I named four of the last six operas at SFO as among the best things I saw; Dead Man Walking was also superb. SFO had a stupendous year and in fact has been on a roll since the centennial season. Hats off to Matthew Shilvock and his team for this long string of artistic successes, which has also included a fair number of sellouts.

As for the flip side, I am going to pass on flagging concerts I found disappointing or wrong-headed. There's not much doubt that the worst event of the year was Esa-Pekka Salonen's departure from San Francisco Symphony after just five years as music director. He reinvigorated the orchestra's programming, led many great concerts, hired many terrific musicians, and thanks to the short-sightedness of the board and management, which couldn't figure out how to fund his ambitions for the future, he is gone.

• Joshua Kosman's picks
• SFCV Los Angeles writers' picks
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center

San Francisco Opera Parsifal Streaming, Starting Sunday, November 2, 2025

Temple of the Grail

Act 1

Photo: Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

Tomorrow, Sunday, November 2, is the livestream of the San Francisco Opera "Parsifal," an extraordinary

production in every way. It's a matinee starting at 1 p. m. Pacific time. and it's available on demand from Monday, Nov. 3 at 10 a.m. PT to Wednesday, Nov. 5 at 10 a.m. PT. 

 

To buy tickets, go here. It's a bargain at $25, cheaper than any ticket other than standing room, and you don't need to spend all of a weekend afternoon attending or watching this monster, which is roughly five hours long. If you haven't yet experienced SFO music director Eun Sun Kim's Wagner, run, don't walk. Her three Wagner outings have all been superb.

 

Pure Foolishness

Parsifal, Act 2

Photo: Cory Weaver / courtesy of San Francisco Opera

I've got many thoughts that aren't in my review, but I also have a cold. Watch for updates to this post.

• Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle: Hard to parse 
• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV (Review updated on 10/30)
• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV: Eun Sun Kim Profile
• Thomas May, Opera Now 
• Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box 
• Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler; Charlies Tiee 2nd Parsifal
• Michael Strickland, S.F Civic Center
• Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills
• Richard Ginelle, Classical Voice North America
• Harvey Steiman, Seen & Heard International
• Caroline Crawford, Bay City News
• Gary Kamiya, Substack: "Parsifal": When Christian-pagan acid trips go wrong
• James Ambroff-Tahan, Examiner (preview) 
• Matthew Travisano, Parterre Box, interview with Matthew Ozawa
• Parterre Box, "Change My Mind About Parsifal"
• Tony Bravo, SF Chronicle, feature about Matthew Shilvock

Department of Speculation

Post, 2011 SFO Ring

San Francisco Opera hasn't announced when they're doing the Ring next, though since it's known that Eun Sun Kim will conduct, it'll be before her contract expires at the end of the 2030-31 season. Given the problematic financial environment for the arts just now, well, it could be a ways out. [Update: A couple of people have mentioned to me, and I have now seen with my own eyes, that Opera says it'll be in June, 2028. They're usually quite well informed.]

Still, as I wrote in my Santa Fe Die Walküre review, we're at a moment of generational change in Wagner singing. Let's take some time to speculate as to who might be in the next SFO Ring. I have absolutely no inside information on casting; these are strictly my hallucinations. Also, my lists are in alphabetical order, not the order in which I'd like to see these roles cast.

Wotan

• Nicholas Brownlee
• Ryan Speedo Green (singing his first this year, in Santa Fe and LA; apparently signed for the next Met Ring)
• Brian Mulligan (sang it in Europe, in concert, with YNS)

Fricka / Waltraute / Norn

• Jamie Barton
• Tanja Ariane Baumgartner
• Raehann Bryce-Davis
• Irene Roberts
• Sarah Saturnino
• Annika Schlicht

Alberich

• Tomas Konieczny
• Falk Struckmann

Brünnhilde

• Lise Davidsen (can SFO pay her fees?)
• Christine Goerke
• Anja Kampe (an impressive Isolde last year in SF)
• Camilla Nylund (an impressive Kaiserin in 2023 in SF)
• Tamara Wilson

Sieglinde

• Vida Miknevičiūtė
• Irene Roberts (I know, I know, she's a mezzo, but believe me she has the vocal chops for this)
• Elisabeth Strid
• Suggestions from Charles Bush, hoisted from the comments, with my own comments added:
• Jennifer Holloway
• Elza van den Heever. By the end of 2025-26, she'll have been back at SFO for three productions, which makes her a strong candidate to be included in the Ring.
• Rachel Willis-Sorensen. I hear that she is aiming away from Wagner, but yes, she'd be great. Such a beautiful voice.

Siegmund

• Clay Hilley
• Brian Jagde
• Brandon Jovanovich
• Jamez McCorkle
• Simon O'Neill
• Russell Thomas
• Suggestions from Charles Bush, hoisted from the comments, with my own comments added:
• John Matthew Myers. I've seen him twice, in Gurrelieder, jumping in for Jovanovich, and as Iopas in the truncated Seattle Les Troyens. He's very impressive.
• Michael Spyres. HELL YES.

Siegfried

• Daniel Brenna
• Clay Hilley
• Simon O'Neill?
• Andreas Schager
• Stefan Vinke
• Suggestions from Charles Bush, hoisted from the comments:
• Klaus Florian Vogt (?)
• Michael Spyres (!?!)
  

Loge / Mime

• Russell Thomas
• Brenton Ryan
• Suggestions from Charles Bush, hoisted from the comments, my own comment added:
• Sean Panikkar. Oh, I wonder if he's a plausible Siegmund? He was wonderful in the L.A. Satyagraha and more recently as Stravinsky's Oedipus at SFS.

Hunding / Hagen

• Peixin Chen
• Jongwon Han
• Soloman Howard

Who do you like?

San Francisco Opera Orchestra

St. Joseph's Arts Society

Formerly St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

The San Francisco Opera Orchestra, under Music Director Eun Sun Kim, played a lovely concert on Saturday, May 17, at St. Joseph's Arts Society. I wrote about it for the S.F. Chronicle, not a review, but a report on what happened and what it was like. I really enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere, with children and adults wandering around during the performance and talking to the musicians before and after.

The orchestra played Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, the Rondeau from Purcell's Abdelazar, and Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Henry Purcell), which, right, is the Rondeau from Abdelazar. I thought the performances were terrific; the orchestra sounded great; it was fantastic to be sitting ten feet from the orchestra. Eun Sun Kim's multitasking––conducting, holding a microphone, and calling out the instruments in the Britten––was astonishing. Stephen Smoliar was there too and wrote it up for his blog.

Tristan und Isolde, San Francisco Opera

 

Anja Kampe as Isolde and Simon O'Neill as Tristan

Photo by Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

I feel like it's been all-Tristan and all-Eun Sun Kim for the last two weeks, in good ways. Here's what I have written plus further commentary:

• Review of the film "Eun Sun Kim: A Journey into Lohengrin." Stream the film (no charge) at the SF Opera web site.
• Eun Sun Kim renews her contract with SF Opera through 2030-31.
• Preview of Tristan und Isolde. SF Chronicle and SFCV. I loved talking to Matthew Piatt (prompter and member of SFO music staff), Rufus Olivier (principal bassoon), Gabriel Young (associate principal oboe, playing principal in Tristan), and Shinji Eshima (bass) about playing in this amazing opera. Deepest thanks to all of you for making time in your schedules to chat with me during a period of intense rehearsals for Tristan.
• Review, Tristan und Isolde, SF Chronicle and SFCV. Verdict: Kim, singers, orchestra, direction all magnificent. Go see this while you can; four performances remain. One way or the other, I will see three of those. The November 5 performance has the best availability (I KNOW I KNOW).

Well, what a night the 19th was. I have extensive notes on the performance, and there's so much I had to omit. A few notes - 

• If you've got eyes like mine or you're far from the stage, bring binoculars so you can see the specificity of the singers' responses to the text, especially soprano Anja Kampe. 
• Keep an eye on Annika Schlicht's dealings with that chest of potions. 
• There really was no appropriate place to note how the staging makes sure that the singers are able to stay hydrated. In Act 2, Tristan brings a bag on stage with him, and....part way through the love duet, he pulls out a flask and pours water into a goblet, which he then shares with Isolde. It's the reverse of what happens in Act 1, where she shares the cup of atonement with him. In Act 3, there's a flask of water on stage that Kurwenal uses to give Tristan water.
• The production was designed for La Fenice (The Phoenix) in Venice, an opera house that seats about 1100 people to the War Memorial Opera House's approximately 3200. Bayreuth seats 1900. Yes, I would love to see Tristan in a very small theater.
• A friend once said that you had to sit through all of Act 3 to deserve Isolde's transfiguration (aka "Liebestod"). Hearing the Tristan finale in context is, to say the least, nothing like hearing it in isolation.
• This was my 7th live production of Tristan: Seattle, 1998, Armin Jordan; SFO, 1998, Donald Runnicles; Met, 1999, James Levine; SFO, 2006, Donald Runnicles; Bayreuth, 2015, Christian Thielemann; Paris Opera (Bastille), 2018, Philippe Jordan; SFO, 2024, Eun Sun Kim. I also saw the Met HD broadcast with Simon Rattle conducting, whatever year that was, with Nina Stemme, Stuart Skelton, Ekaterina Gubanova, Rene Pape. 
• I don't know how I managed to go nine years between live productions. Tristan is my drug of choice.

San Francisco Opera: Lohengrin

Lohengrin, Act III

David Alden production, staged at San Francisco Opera

Kristinn Sigmundsson as King Heinrich

SFO Chorus

Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

SFO's Lohengrin opened on Sunday, October 15, and I'd say they've got a hit. The production has its issues, discussed in greater or lesser detail in Joshua Kosman's review and mine. He's more positive about Simon O'Neill than I am. Let me note that O'Neill is fine; he sings musically and with a lot of power. But the three other principals are all outstanding and outshine him vocally and dramatically. Better direction would have helped, to be sure; I feel that he's underdirected. 

The debuts and the excellence of Eun Sun Kim's Wagner are the truly big stories here. After decades of mostly hearing the great Donald Runnicles in Wagner, with Nicola Luisotti dipping a toe only into the German romantic repertory, with Lohengrin and Salome, of course I wondered what she'd be like. By the end of the Act I prelude I knew all was well and that the opera was in good hands; the performance was truly magnificent.

More reviews to come, I'm sure:

• Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle
• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
• Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box ("Swan's weh"!!)
• Opera Tattler
• Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills
• Michael Milenski, Opera Today
• Caroline Crawford (Bay City News at SF Gate?)
• Harvey Steiman, Seen & Heard International
• Charles Lewis, 48 Hills
• Andrew Rombakis, Wagner Society of New York 

Previously:

• Mark Berry, Boulezian, 2018 staging in London
• Mark Berry, Boulezian, 2022 staging in London