Opera Parallèle 2026-27 Season

Opera Parallèle has a fascinating season planned for 2026-27. Here's the repertory and descriptions of the three operas they'll perform; full cast information will follow in August.

SALT & SEA – WORLD PREMIERE

November 14–21

The company’s 17th anniversary will open Nov. 14–21, with the world premiere of Salt & Spirit, a new theatrical work rooted in the musical traditions of the Gullah-Geechee people of the Carolinas. This evocative production draws on a rare collection of resurfaced Gullah spirituals from the late nineteenth century, reimagining ancestral songs through a contemporary theatrical lens that blends classical, jazz, and traditional influences.

 Developed and performed by tenor Victor Ryan Robertson and arranger/pianist Adrianne Duncan, in collaboration with Opera Parallèle Creative Director Brian Staufenbiel, Salt & Spirit brings these powerful songs into a richly theatrical world. Inspired by Robertson and Duncan’s song cycle, Gullah Meditations, this moving tribute to cultural memory, resilience, and storytelling honors the enduring spirit carried through Gullah-Geechee song.

The Gullah-Geechee people are descendants of enslaved Africans who worked on rice, indigo, and cotton plantations along the lower Atlantic coast. The unique nature of their enslavement on islands and in isolated coastal areas allowed them to retain many aspects of their ancestral culture in ways which are clearly visible in their contemporary arts, cuisine, music, and language.

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY — WEST COAST PREMIERE

March 11–14, 2027

Following the company’s great success with Everest, Opera Parallèle is very pleased to be reunited with the creative team of composer Joby Talbot and librettist Gene Scheer for their poignant opera, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, set for March 11-14, 2027. This West Coast debut will feature a newly created chamber orchestration by Ben Foskett, commissioned by Opera Parallèle.

Based on the true story of French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, this powerful work explores resilience, memory, and the triumph of the human spirit. Following its 2023 world premiere at The Dallas Opera, the creative team sought to bring this story to more intimate settings, deepening the audience’s connection to Bauby’s journey. With this reorchestration for chamber ensemble, Opera Parallèle enhances the story’s authenticity and emotional impact, bringing Bauby’s voice even closer.

The opera follows Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, after suffering a massive stroke, is left with “locked-in syndrome”—fully conscious but unable to move or speak, except for blinking his left eye. Trapped inside his own body, Bauby embarks on an astonishing journey of resilience, dictating his memoir of 1997, letter by letter through blinks. The opera vividly captures his struggle, memories, and imagination, weaving an emotional and immersive musical tapestry that explores the force of individual courage and the victory of communication against all odds.

Opera Parallèle’s award-winning Nicole Paiement will be on the podium and highly praised Brian Staufenbiel will direct this new production. This two-act opera will be sung in English with English supertitles.

TAKING UP SERPENTS — WEST COAST PREMIERE

May 2027

Taking Up Serpents explores themes of faith, superstition, morality, kinship, and destiny with an eclectic folk-inspired score by critically acclaimed Indian American composer Kamala Sankaram, and an original story informed by librettist Jerre Dye's family roots in the Deep South.

From “one of the most exciting composers in the country,” (The Washington Post), Kamala Sankaram’s one-act chamber opera Taking Up Serpents, will have its West Coast debut following past productions at Washington National Opera, the Glimmerglass Festival and Chicago Opera Theater.

The story regards Kayla, a 25-year-old young woman who works at Save-Mart in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and gets a phone call from her estranged mother informing her that her father, a fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal snake handling preacher, has been dangerously bitten by one of his snakes and lies dying in a hospital. Kayla’s journey home forces her to confront her troubled upbringing in this dramatic story.

Nicole Paiement will conduct the orchestra and singers in a new production created and directed by Brian Staufenbiel.

Cal Performances 2026-27

Cal Performances presents the West Coast premiere of William Kentridge’s The Head & the Load, an epic theater work that explores the stories of African soldiers in World War I, at the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts Arena in Oakland Nov 12–15, 2026.

Photo: Stella Oliver, courtesy of Cal Performances

Cal Performances just announced its 2026-27 season, and as usual it's full of great performers and likely great performances. Here are some of the goodies:

• Attacca Quartet is Ensemble in Residence for the season. They'll appear in one concert with composer Caroline Shaw, and play Adams and Beethoven in another.
• The West Coast premier of a new work by William Kentridge, the Head and the Load. I missed The Great Yes, The Great No, and I won't miss this one. Cal Performances also announced a five-year initiative presenting Kentridge's works.
• Tribute to those pioneering minimalist composers who have round-number birthdays this year or next: Steve Reich, 90, Philip Glass, 90, John Adams, 80. Alas, no Meredith Monk, who turns 84 this year.
• Yannick Nézet-Séguin brings the Vienna Phil for three concerts centered around Mahler. I heard YNS lead the Philadelphia Orchestra in Mahler 6 last year and it was good, so I'm there. Also, there will be a rare chance to hear mezzo Elina Garança, who has never appeared with SF Opera and probably never will. Also Yuja Wang plays a Prokofiev piano concerto, and sure, I will hear her in practically anything and regret missing the Mahler Chamber Orchestra the other day.
• Mark Morris world premiere
• Il Pomo d'Oro and Joyce DiDonato in Dido and Aeneas and Carrisimi's Jephtha.
• Takács Quartet and Jeremy Denk in works of Mendelssohn, Gabriela Lena Frank, and César Franck.
• Judy Collins
• Tenor Ben Bliss
• Countertenor Iestyn Davies
• Mezzo Ema Nikolovska with guitarist Sean Shibe in Orlando Variations, which takes off from Virginia Wollf's novel.
• Harpsichordist Jean Rondeau in French Baroque music
• Soprano Lise Davidsen
• Luna Lab@10, a celebration of Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid's Luna Composition Lab, which mentors a wide range of female, nonbinary, and/or gender-nonconforming composers ages 13 to 18. The performers include the Friction Quartet, Dutt & Campbell Duo, and The Living Earth Show. They'll play music by various young composers, Mazzoli, and Reid.
• Audra McDonald.
• The English Concert, Handel's Alessandro
• More string quartets, more pianists, more dance companies.
• Not enough music by women, pretty sure the performers are a substantial majority male.

San Francisco Symphony 2026-27

Davies Symphony Hall

Home of the San Francisco Symphony

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Well, okay! San Francisco Symphony announced their 2026-27 season the other month – sorry, I am definitely behind in posting about recent events – and it is a good season, a return to the kind of adventurous programming we got used to during the long tenure of Michael Tilson Thomas (okay, there was a slump at the end, I know, I know) and the too-short tenure of Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Salonen will be back for what will be a fun program – it includes a new concerto for harp and percussion, by Rene Orth, to be played by principal percussionist Jacob Nissly and principal harp Katherine Siochi – and his influence is clear in a few other places during the season. That's because there are a bunch of big new works programmed or coming in the near future, and they absolutely must have been commissioned when he was music director. These include the Orth, a new violin concerto called How to Be a Bird, by the prodigiously gifted Gabriella Smith, and a future concerto for orchestra by Reena Esmail. 

There's plenty of good stuff in the season! In addition to works named above, I'm looking forward to seeing Metropolis with live orchestra on the very big screen at Davies.

The full season brochure can be downloaded as a PDF; you can also view or download the full season calendar.

• Lisa Hirsch, San Francisco Chronicle.
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
• Janos Gereben, SFCV

 

Season Announcement Season

It's that time of year, and I will try post at least some analysis of orchestral seasons across the country and how they are doing repertory-wise, that is, dead white guys versus the rest of the world.

A preliminary note that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Classical Series is a disgrace: the season has works by 8 9 living composers, mostly guys, mostly white. They are Michael Abels, Mason Bates, Tan Dun, Philip Glass, Magnus Lindberg, Arvo Pärt, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Roberto Sierra, and Julia Wolfe. The rest of the season is dead white men, except for a short work by Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, which I missed the other day.

Karina Canellakis and Jane Glover are the only women who are conducting. 

You can see all of the details on the handy CSO season grid. I wish every orchestra published a document like this!