The San Francisco Opera is presenting exciting 2025-2026 season programs with classic operas and new productions.
The company’s 103rd season kicks off on September 5, 2025, with an opening weekend celebration under Music Director Eun Sun Kim featuring the annual Opera Ball, co-presented with the San Francisco Opera Guild, Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto starring acclaimed baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat, and Opera in the Park, the free, annual concert at Golden Gate Park in its 50th year on Sunday, September 7.
Keystones of the 2025-26 season include the world premiere of The Monkey King by composer Huang Ruo and librettist David Henry Hwang and a new production of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal.
San Francisco Opera General Director Matthew Shilvock said, “Bringing two epic new productions to life simultaneously is an incredible affirmation of the company’s talents across so many disciplines and the community’s support for large-scale creativity.
A new Parsifal is a major undertaking for any opera company, and to be doing it with the leadership of Eun Sun Kim and Matthew Ozawa promises to be a sublime experience. With The Monkey King and Dead Man Walking,we celebrate the company’s historic commitment to storytelling that makes a difference.
And the whole season is filled with artistry that affirms the Bay Area as one of the great cultural centers of the world. I’m very excited for what lies ahead!”
Music Director Eun Sun Kim said, “Several of opera’s great masterpieces make up our 2025-26 Season. The opener, Rigoletto, was considered by Verdi himself to be his best opera, and Parsifal returns to our stage for the first time in 25 years.
Wagner labored for many years on his final work, but the musical language and storytelling in Parsifal are so advanced that, when we do our job in the pit, it is a theatrical experience like no other. Elektra marks a transition for Richard Strauss from the melodic language in his early tone poems to an expansive instrumentation of vast harmonic possibility.
The opera is so demanding, especially for the singers, and I am very happy to be conducting this first Elektra of my career with my orchestra and such a wonderful cast.
The San Francisco Opera Orchestra and I customarily work together in the orchestra pit, but these musicians, due to their vast experience, can also command the stage. In our fall concert, the orchestra will do just that in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.”
2025-26 SEASON in Detail
OPENING OF SAN FRANCISCO OPERA’S 103RD SEASON, OPERA BALL
Friday, September 5, 2025, at 5 p.m.
San Francisco Opera’s opening night Opera Ball, co-presented with the San Francisco Opera Guild, is one of the premier events on the Bay Area’s philanthropic and social calendars. The annual fundraiser begins with a cocktail reception and formal dinner at City Hall.
Guests then proceed to the opera house for the opening of the new season with Music Director Eun Sun Kim leading Verdi’s Rigoletto. Dancing and late-night bites await back at City Hall after the performance. The Opera Ball is made possible, in part, by Opening Weekend Grand Sponsor Diane B. Wilsey and is co-chaired by Jennifer Bienaimé and Isabel Rhee.
Proceeds benefit a wide range of artistic initiatives of the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Opera Guild’s education programs, which reach thousands in K-12 classrooms and after-school programs.
RIGOLETTO by Giuseppe Verdi
September 5 – 27, 2025
San Francisco Opera’s 103rd season opens with Rigoletto, one of the most popular and powerful operas in the repertoire. Giuseppe Verdi’s 1851 tragic work follows the titular jester who mocks the Duke of Mantua’s courtiers while attempting to shelter his daughter from their depraved world. Music Director Eun Sun Kim leads this fast-paced classic, which includes some of the composer’s most heartrending and buoyant music like the famous aria “La donna è mobile.”
Following his 2024 company debut in Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera, Mongolian baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat returns as Rigoletto. Romanian soprano Adela Zaharia, who portrayed Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni in 2022 and was last seen here in the 100th Anniversary Concert, plays Rigoletto’s daughter, Gilda. Italian tenor Giovanni Sala makes his American opera debut as the Duke of Mantua.
Mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, who has portrayed Carmen with the company and was featured in the In Song series, plays Maddalena. Chinese bass Peixin Chen joins the Company as Sparafucile, and baritone Aleksey Bogdanov as Monterone. Jose Maria Condemi directs the San Francisco Opera’s production.
50TH ANNIVERSARY
San Francisco Chronicle Presents OPERA IN THE PARK
Sunday, September 7, 2025 at 1:30 p.m.
Opening weekend culminates with Opera in the Park, the annual free concert at Robin Williams Meadow in Golden Gate Park. This season’s event marks the 50th presentation of the beloved San Francisco tradition which began in 1971 and has been a showcase for many operatic luminaries, including Marilyn Horne and Luciano Pavarotti.
The concert features the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and vocal soloists from the 2025–26 Season under the baton of Eun Sun Kim. Bring your picnic baskets for this al fresco gathering attended by thousands of Bay Area residents and visitors each year.
25TH-ANNIVERSARY PRESENTATION
DEAD MAN WALKING by Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally
September 14 – 28, 2025
Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s Dead Man Walking, based on Sister Helen Prejean’s best-selling memoir, returns to the stage where it all began. Proclaimed “a masterpiece” (San Francisco Chronicle) at its 2000 world premiere, the opera follows Sister Helen’s spiritual journey while she ministers to a condemned man on death row. With 80 productions in 13 countries, Dead Man Walking is the most performed new opera of the last 25 years.
Commissioned by San Francisco Opera, Dead Man Walking was Bay Area composer Jake Heggie’s first work for the opera stage. Over the ensuing 25 years, Heggie has expanded the operatic repertoire with numerous works and has been acknowledged as one of the art form’s leading creators.
This year, Heggie will be inducted into the OPERA America Hall of Fame and Musical America named him Composer of the Year (2025) for his work which includes Moby-Dick (2010), Great Scott (2015), It’s a Wonderful Life (2016) and Intelligence (2023). Patrick Summers, who conducted the first production of Dead Man Walking returns to conduct San Francisco Opera’s 25th-anniversary presentation.
Created by a consortium of seven American opera companies and now owned by Lyric Opera of Chicago, the production by frequent Heggie collaborator Leonard Foglia exhibits the work of designers Michael McGarty (sets), Jess Goldstein (costumes), Brian Nason (lighting), Elaine McCarthy (projections) and Roger Gans (sound). Katrina Bachus is the associate director.
Just as Dead Man Walking continues to resonate with new audiences, Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, the first Sister Helen in 2000, returns to the work as Mrs. Patrick De Rocher, the role originated by legendary mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade. Jamie Barton, who has triumphed with San Francisco Opera in works by Bellini, Donizetti, Dvořák and Wagner, portrayal of Sister Helen.
Ryan McKinny brings to San Francisco Opera his acclaimed interpretation of death-row inmate Joseph De Rocher. Brittany Renee, following her appearances in Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abel’s Omar and scheduled return this summer in Puccini’s La Bohème, takes on the role of Sister Helen’s confidante, Sister Rose.
NEW SAN FRANCISCO OPERA PRODUCTION
PARSIFAL by Richard Wagner
October 25 – November 13, 2025
Richard Wagner’s Parsifal centers around an improbable hero whose destiny is to lead the Knights of the Holy Grail. For his final work, the iconoclastic poet/composer capitalized on his musical breakthroughs in Tristan und Isolde and the ambitious scope of his Ring of the Nibelung cycle to create a meditation on compassion that bridges Eastern and Western spiritual traditions.
Music Director Eun Sun Kim’s exploration of Wagner’s music-dramas brings this masterwork back to the Company’s stage after a 25-year hiatus in a brand-new production by director Matthew Ozawa and a creative team including several collaborators from Ozawa’s critically acclaimed San Francisco Opera production of Orpheus and Eurydice (2022)—costume designer Jessica Jahn, lighting designer Yuki Nakase Link and choreographer Rena Butler—with settings designed by Robert Innes Hopkins, who designed the Company’s recent productions of Tosca and La Traviata.
American tenor Brandon Jovanovich heads a spectacular cast as Parsifal. Wagnerian bass Kwangchul Youn as the Grail knight Gurnemanz, a role for which he is renowned (Youn will sing his 100th performance of the role while in San Francisco). Baritone Brian Mulligan portrays Amfortas, the Grail order’s leader. Falk Struckmann portrays the fallen knight, Klingsor. Tanja Ariane Baumgartner makes her Company debut as Kundry.
Act I set design by Robert Innes Hopkins; costume design for Kundry by Jessica Jahn; members of the Parsifal creative team: Robert Innes Hopkins, Jessica Jahn, Matthew Ozawa, Yuki Nakase Link. Photo: Matthew Washburn
BEETHOVEN & FALLA CONCERT
Saturday, November 1, 2025, at 7:30 p.m.
Following the sold-out performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in October 2024, Eun Sun Kim and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra return to the opera house stage in a one-night-only concert featuring Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony along with Spanish composer Manuel de Falla’s Siete Canciones Populares Españolas with mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack as soloist and a suite of dances from Falla’s ballet El Sombrero de Tres Picos (The Three-Cornered Hat).
San Francisco Opera Orchestra on stage with Eun Sun Kim; Music Director Kim; Daniela Mack
Photos: Kristen Loken (left) Stefan Cohen (center), Shervin Lainez (right)
WORLD PREMIERE
The Monkey King by Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang
November 14–30, 2025
Composer Huang Ruo and librettist David Henry Hwang’s new, action-hero opera The Monkey King begins on November 14 in one of the most highly anticipated world premieres of the opera season. Commissioned by the San Francisco Opera in partnership with the Chinese Heritage Foundation of Minnesota, The Monkey King is based on the opening chapters of Journey to the West, a novel from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) widely considered one of China’s greatest literary classics.
The story has been a perennial favorite in Chinese opera for more than a century and, more recently, in film, television, and animation, as well as the 2024 blockbuster video game Black Myth: Wukong, which sold 18 million copies in its first two months.
The story’s debut on the Western opera stage, performed in English and Chinese and uniting the disciplines of opera, dance, and puppetry, follows the ambitious young monkey born from a stone who becomes the ruler of the monkeys and challenges the gods of the seas and heavens in a bid for immortality.
Huang Ruo has won extensive praise for his incisive, lyrical works in a variety of musical genres, from his puppet opera Book of Mountains and Seas and oratorio Angel Island to his operatic collaborations with Tony Award®-winning playwright and librettist David Henry Hwang (An American Soldier, The Rift, and M. Butterfly).
Hwang’s body of work includes the stage plays M. Butterfly, Yellow Face, and Chinglish, the musical Soft Power with composer Jeanine Tesori, and libretti for operas by Osvaldo Golijov (Ainadamar), Unsuk Chin (Alice in Wonderland), and Bright Sheng (Dream of the Red Chamber, a San Francisco Opera commission).
The Monkey King’s high-octane adventures—from the depths of the sea to his epic battle with the gods in heaven—are balanced by moments of repose with the goddess Guanyin and a chorus of Bodhisattvas reflecting on the Monkey King’s progress in Buddhist sutras.
The Monkey King’s whimsical and fantastical world will be conjured for the stage by American Repertory Theater’s award-winning artistic director Diane Paulus, renowned puppeteer and Bay Area native Basil Twist (who collaborated with Huang Ruo on Book of Mountains and Seas), costume designer Anita Yavich, choreographer Ann Yee, lighting designer Ayumu “Poe” Saegusa, and projection designer Hana S. Kim, with guidance by Peking Opera consultant Jamie Guan.
Making her San Francisco Opera debut is conductor Carolyn Kuan, music director of the Hartford Symphony since 2011, who led the New York premiere of Huang Ruo’s An American Soldier and the world premiere of M. Butterfly.
Australian-Chinese tenor Kang Wang makes his company debut as the cunning and charismatic Monkey King. As Guanyin, the Chinese goddess of compassion, soprano Mei Gui Zhang returns after prior successes as Dai Yu in Dream of the Red Chamber. South Korean tenor Konu Kim plays the role of the Jade Emperor.
South Korean baritone Jusung Gabriel Park makes his company debut in the dual roles of the Taoist teacher Subhuti and Buddha. Bass Peixin Chen is Supreme Lord Laozi, and former Adler Fellow baritone Joo Won Kang is Lord Erlang and Ao Guang. Mezzo-soprano Hongni Wu is the Crab General and Venus Star.
Composer Huang Ruo said, “The Monkey King is every bit an inspirational figure known for his wit, humor, righteousness, and power. He is the supreme superhero from Asia, loved and adored not only by the Chinese people throughout the centuries but increasingly by people throughout the world. The Monkey King’s adventures awaken in him an understanding of true power which leads to his self-enlightenment. In our new opera, which blends cultural traditions with a spectacular multidisciplinary production, I hope to bring this Eastern superhero to life and shine a hopeful light that will always appear in any turbulent time.”
Costume design by Anita Yavich; set design by Basil Twist for The Monkey King.
THE BARBER OF SEVILLE by Gioachino Rossini
May 28 – June 21, 2026
THE BARBER OF SEVILLE ENCOUNTER
Wednesday, June 17, 2026
One of opera’s greatest comedies, The Barber of Seville returns to the stage in the San Francisco Opera’s popular production by Spanish director Emilio Sagi. Conductor Benjamin Manis, fresh from his company debut in November/December 2024 leading a sold-out run of Bizet’s Carmen, leads two sparkling casts in Rossini’s tuneful classic about the resourceful barber, Figaro, and the two young lovers he helps to outwit an overbearing guardian.
Joshua Hopkins, last seen with San Francisco Opera as Harry Bailey in Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s It’s a Wonderful Life, and debuting baritone Justin Austin alternate as the jack-of-all-trades Figaro. Russian mezzo-soprano Maria Kataeva makes her American debut as Rosina, sharing the role with Chinese mezzo-soprano Hongni Wu, who appeared with the company as Bao Chai in Dream of the Red Chamber and is scheduled to perform in the November 2025 world premiere of The Monkey King.
Rosina’s dashing suitor, Count Almaviva, will be performed by South African tenor Levy Sekgapane and American tenor Jack Swanson, both making their house debut. The role of Doctor Bartolo will be performed by baritone Renato Girolami and bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi, each having made a comedic splash as Dr. Dulcamara in the company’s 2023 performances of Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love. Bass Riccardo Fassi makes his San Francisco Opera debut as Don Basilio.
On Wednesday, June 17, the company’s popular Encounter series continues with The Barber of Seville Encounter. After experiencing a portion of San Francisco Opera’s production of Rossini’s timeless comedy, audiences will emerge from the theater into the Opera House’s transformed lobby and hallway spaces, transporting them into the opera’s setting in Seville. Part opera, part party, the immersive, uniquely San Francisco Opera event offers a new way to experience opera. Recommended for audiences ages 21 and over.
ELEKTRA by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal
June 7–27, 2026
Music Director Eun Sun Kim takes to the podium in June 2026 for Elektra, a staggering work requiring one of the largest pit orchestras in the operatic repertoire. The first of several artistic collaborations by composer Richard Strauss and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Elektra’s raw energy and emotion find dramatic expression in Keith Warner’s “extraordinary … stunning” (San Francisco Chronicle) production.
Directed in revival by Anja Kühnhold, this staging sets the action in a museum where a young woman finds herself trapped in an exhibition about ancient Greece and lives out Elektra’s tragic obsession to avenge her father, Agamemnon.
An extraordinary trio of artists anchors the cast of Elektra. Elena Pankratova makes her company debut in the formidable title role. Michaela Schuster performs Elektra’s embattled mother, Klytämnestra. Elza van den Heever, a former Adler Fellow and San Francisco Conservatory of Music graduate, takes on Chrysothemis, Elektra’s conciliatory sister.
PRIDE CONCERT
Friday, June 26, 2026, at 7:30 p.m.
The San Francisco Opera presents its second Pride Concert in the opera house just prior to Pride Weekend. The event will showcase the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and soloists in a program celebrating LGBTQIA+ composers, performers, anthems, and more. More details will be announced at a later date.