25/26 Season: World Premieres, New Releases, and Major Debuts
Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking / photo by Javier del Real
Verismo Classical Music PR
25/26 Season Preview
25TH ANNIVERSARY OF DEAD MAN WALKING
Jake Heggie • Jamie Barton • Ryan McKinny
COMMISSIONS & PREMIERES
Music of Remembrance • Songs for Murdered Sisters • Jake Heggie
HIGH-PROFILE DEBUTS
Miles Mykkanen • Lidiya Yankovskaya
NEW RELEASES
Intelligence album • Gene Scheer Site
AUGUST 2025
August 1 • Worldwide
Following an acclaimed run of his Moby-Dick adaptation at the Metropolitan Opera, librettist GENE SCHEER launches his new website. This year, Scheer opens the Met’s 25/26 season with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, based on the novel by Michael Chabon and created with composer Mason Bates. A recording of his opera Intelligence, developed with composer Jake Heggie and director Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, receives a worldwide release from Houston Grand Opera on the LSO Live label while another recent Heggie collaboration, Into the Fire, streams on Medici.tv, performed by mezzo Joyce DiDonato and Amsterdam’s famed Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
August 29 • Worldwide
JAKE HEGGIE’s opera Intelligence is based on the little-known true story of two women – one formerly enslaved, one a Southern woman of privilege – who infiltrated the Confederate White House and ran a Union spy ring during the American Civil War. Created with director and choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and librettist Gene Scheer, the work was hailed by the Houston Chronicle as “groundbreaking…a gorgeous, nuanced, layered and suspenseful masterpiece that deftly balances drama and wit.” Intelligence will be released as a world premiere recording on the LSO Live label – the first album in the label’s new partnership with Houston Grand Opera. The live capture features JAMIE BARTON, Janai Brugger, and J’Nai Bridges in the original production that opened HGO’s 2023/24 season.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay / Metropolitan Opera
SEPTEMBER 2025
September 14–28 • San Francisco, USA
Following more than 80 productions around the world, JAKE HEGGIE’s Dead Man Walking celebrates its 25th anniversary with a return to the War Memorial stage where it premiered. Commissioned by San Francisco Opera in 2000, with a libretto by the late Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally based on the iconic memoir by Sister Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking was Heggie’s first opera. It has since become the most widely performed new opera of the last 25 years, opening the Metropolitan Opera’s 2023/24 season and earning praise from The New York Times for its “soaring music, swelling tenderness, and sweeping ensemble.” San Francisco Opera presents Leonard Foglia’s captivating production, starring JAMIE BARTON, RYAN MCKINNY, and Susan Graham – with Patrick Summers, conductor of the work’s world premiere, in the pit.
September 21–October 11 • New York, USA
On opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s 25/26 season, tenor MILES MYKKANEN stars as Sam Clay in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Chabon, the Mason Bates and Gene Scheer opera follows two Jewish cousins – a refugee from wartime Prague and a closeted queer Brooklynite – who team up to create The Escapist, an anti-fascist superhero. Under the baton of Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the eclectic score incorporates electronic elements and a variety of musical styles to conjure the opera’s three distinct worlds: Nazi-occupied Prague, the bustling streets of New York City, and the technicolor realm of comic-book fantasy.
September 28 • Victoria, Canada
Ten years after the tragic death of his sister, baritone Joshua Hopkins brings SONGS FOR MURDERED SISTERS to the Victoria Symphony for the work’s West Coast premiere. After Hopkins’ sister was murdered by an ex-partner in a horrific killing spree, Hopkins set out to use his voice to wake people up to the global epidemic of gender-based violence – and their part in it. His call to action was answered by exceptional creators JAKE HEGGIE and Margaret Atwood. BBC Music Magazine praises the work as “at once powerful and tender…The cycle ultimately transcends the terrible circumstances of its conception to offer both a strident piece of social activism and an affecting work of art.”
Music of Remembrance Ensemble / photo by Ben Van Houten
OCTOBER 2025
October 19–November 15 • Oslo, Norway
Conductor LIDIYA YANKOVSKAYA makes her Scandinavian debut leading Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at Den Norske Opera. A fiercely committed advocate for Slavic masterpieces, she recently conducted the work at Staatsoper Hamburg, where Klassik begeistert raved, “the orchestra played fabulously under Yankovskaya, again and again intensively measuring the emotional world of this opera.”
October 26 • Seattle, USA
MUSIC OF REMEMBRANCE opens their season with Witness to Courage, presenting the West Coast premiere of JAKE HEGGIE’s Crossing Borders. Commissioned by the George and Nora London Foundation, the cycle is based on the WWII diaries of Nora Schapiro, telling the dramatic story of her family’s escape from France to America when she was 16 years old. Other works based on resistance and defiance – by Paul Schoenfield, Géza Frid, and William Hilsley – initiate MOR’s season-long exploration of courage and conscience.
October 30–November 14 • Houston, USA
Longtime Houston Grand Opera favorites JAMIE BARTON and RYAN MCKINNY take on multiple role debuts in the company’s first-ever full presentation of Puccini’s masterful Il trittico. Barton tackles the full triptych as Frugola, Zia Principessa, and Zita, while McKinny portrays Michele and the legendary Gianni Schicchi. Patrick Summers, in his final season as HGO Music Director, conducts.
Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya / photo by Alex Markow
NOVEMBER 2025
November 1–18 • London, United Kingdom
English National Opera presents the first fully staged London performances of JAKE HEGGIE’s Dead Man Walking, featuring Christine Rice, Michael Mayes, and Dame Sarah Connolly in a new Annilese Miskimmon production at the London Coliseum. An international co-production with Opera North and Finnish National Opera, Dead Man Walking will tour the northern United Kingdom and be mounted in Leeds and Helsinki in future seasons.
November 30 • Vienna, Austria
Conductor LIDIYA YANKOVSKAYA leads the Tonkünstler Orchester in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and Stravinsky’s Suite from The Firebird. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently noted, “Prokofiev is Yankovskaya’s wheelhouse, as are Slavic masterpieces. She conducted with a broad but clear beat, shaping phrases with practiced swoops of her arms and quick zips of her baton.”
Jake Heggie’s Intelligence / photo by Michael Bishop
JANUARY 2026
January 16 & 18 • Seattle, USA
In a dual house and role debut, tenor MILES MYKKANEN brings his “lovely lyric voice with an appealing honeyed sweetness” (Opera News) to Seattle Opera for Strauss rarity Daphne. Mykkanen sings the passionate Leukippos, opposite soprano Heidi Stober in the title role and David Butt Philip as Apollo, while David Afkham conducts members of the Seattle Symphony.
January 23–February 8 • Houston, USA
Acclaimed by the Houston Chronicle for his “warmth, resonance, and power” and Houston Press for his “passion, joy, and immense stage presence,” bass-baritone RYAN MCKINNY returns to Houston Grand Opera for a role debut as Lieutenant Horstmayer in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Silent Night by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell.
January 30–February 15 • Houston, USA
More than a decade after her career-launching performance of the Witch’s Aria at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, mezzo JAMIE BARTON gets her first crack at the full role, making her long-awaited debut as the crafty Witch in Hansel and Gretel with Houston Grand Opera.
January 30–February 15 • Norfolk, Richmond, Fairfax, USA
This winter, JAKE HEGGIE’s tenth opera Intelligence receives a new production at Virginia Opera, with six performances across the state in Norfolk, Fairfax, and Richmond – the very city in which the opera’s story unfolds.
Jamie Barton as Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde / photo by Curtis Brown
FEBRUARY 2026
February 28 & March 1 • Houston, USA
Houston Symphony’s concert of the second act of Tristan und Isolde features JAMIE BARTON as Brangäne – a role she has performed in full at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Bayerische Staatsoper, and Santa Fe Opera. The New York Times wrote, “Barton’s magnificent Brangäne was as authoritatively acted as it was movingly sung, an embodiment of the role in a production that fixed relentless attention on its principals.”
Ryan McKinny as Bluebeard in Bluebeard’s Castle / photo by Liza Voll
MARCH 2026
March 19 • Seattle, USA
In Echoes of Conscience, MUSIC OF REMEMBRANCE spotlights works by members of the Front National des Musiciens – musical artists active in the French resistance under Nazi occupation – and the prominent “Les Six,” a group of early 20th-century composers known for their musical style and influence. Of special interest is Darius Milhaud’s La Création du Monde, inspired by a trip to Harlem, which evokes African creation myths through a blend of jazz and classical idioms. This work takes on added dimension with world premiere choreography commissioned from Spectrum Dance Theater’s Donald Byrd.
March 19–29 • Washington D.C., USA
Bass-baritone RYAN MCKINNY stars opposite J’Nai Bridges in Robert Ward’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera The Crucible, based on the play by Arthur Miller. A new production by Francesca Zambello, led by new WNO Music Director Robert Spano, tells a darkly timely story about a witch hunt as an allegory for political persecution, with six performances at Washington National Opera.
Miles Mykkanen as The Groom in Innocence / photo by Cory Weaver
APRIL 2026
April 6–29 • New York, USA
MILES MYKKANEN returns to the Metropolitan Opera as The Groom in the house premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence. He first performed the role at San Francisco Opera in the work’s North American premiere, with Opera Magazine writing, “A uniformly excellent cast captured the knife-edged emotions of denial and retribution, fear and rage.” Singing in Finnish, French, and English, Mykkanen joins mezzo Joyce DiDonato, soprano Jacquelyn Stucker, and ethno-pop singer Vilma Jää as principal cast, with Susanna Mälkki leading seven productions.
April 2–4 • Naples, USA
April 8–9 • Ottawa, Canada
May 7–10 • Houston, USA
Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell commissioned five renowned American composers – JAKE HEGGIE, Jennifer Higdon, Edgar Meyer, Jessie Montgomery, and Kevin Puts – to create The Elements, reflecting the foundations of traditional Chinese medicine: Fire, Air, Water, Ether, and Earth. Bell performs the concerto with Naples Philharmonic in Florida, gives the work its Canadian premiere with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, and wraps up the spring tour with performances with Houston Symphony.
April 15 • London, United Kingdom
Conductor LIDIYA YANKOVSKAYA’s 2025 debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra resulted in an immediate re-engagement for the world premiere of Ryan Carter’s immersive piano concerto featuring live electronic sound and video. The new work is paired with Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7 and Saint-Saëns’ tongue-in-cheek The Carnival of the Animals.
April 24 & 25 • Omaha, USA
In a co-production between Omaha Symphony and Opera Omaha, LIDIYA YANKOVSKAYA leads performances of Bartok’s psychological thriller Bluebeard’s Castle. RYAN MCKINNY inhabits the title role, in a portrayal that earned praise from the Boston Globe for a “rare blend of dramatic force and subtlety,” opposite Michelle DeYoung as Judith.
Jake Heggie bows with Gene Scheer / photo by Karen Almond
MAY 2026
May 1–3 • Madison, USA
In celebration of its 100th anniversary, Madison Symphony Orchestra has commissioned JAKE HEGGIE and Gene Scheer to create EARTH: A Choral Symphony. Structured in four movements, the work explores themes of truth, possibility, and humanity’s relationship to the planet. John DeMain conducts the world premiere with soprano Ailyn Pérez and three choruses in Madison Symphony’s centennial season finale at Overture Hall.
May 2–20 • Paris, France
In her Opéra National de Paris debut, the Financial Times praised JAMIE BARTON for her “rare kind of confidence, a kind of here-I-am manner of occupying space.” She returns to Paris this season for Robert Carsen’s inventive production of Rusalka, singing seven performances as Ježibaba at the Opéra Bastille.
May 17 • Seattle, USA
May 20 • San Francisco, USA
May 23–24 • Chicago, USA
In a three-city tour, MUSIC OF REMEMBRANCE presents the world premiere of Tom Cipullo’s The Dialogue of Memories, with a libretto by legendary Chicago Tribune journalist Howard Reich. Based on the real-life Holocaust survival stories of Reich’s parents, the opera follows Reich as he searches for meaning in his mother’s battle with the ghosts of her past – and encounters Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel. Dominic Armstrong takes on the role of the journalist, while husband-and-wife-duo Michael Mayes and Megan Marino appear as Wiesel and Reich’s mother Sonia.
May 30 • Chicago, USA
Following her transformative tenure as Music Director of Chicago Opera Theater, the Chicago Tribune credited LIDIYA YANKOVSKAYA with “raising the profile of COT immensely, her interpretations bracing and repertoire head-spinningly varied.” One of her signature accomplishments was spearheading the creation of the Vanguard Initiative, an immersive two-year residency for emerging opera composers. With the program slated to sunset at the end of the 25/26 season, she returns to COT to lead the world premiere of the final Vanguard commission: Trusted, an opera that explores themes of trust and family, by Aaron Israel Levin and Marella Martin Koch.
May 30–June 21 • Los Angeles, USA
In another role and house debut, MILES MYKKANEN portrays the determined Tamino in Barrie Kosky’s iconic silent film-inspired production of The Magic Flute at LA Opera. Notably, James Conlon will conduct the run, in his final performances as Music Director.
Mezzo Jamie Barton / photo by Jonathan Ferro
JUNE 2026
June 4–6 • Minneapolis, USA
JAMIE BARTON makes her company debut with Minnesota Orchestra in performances of Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs, drawn from five sonnets of the beloved Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Written for the composer’s wife, the revered mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, the cycle ultimately became the couple’s last artistic collaboration before she passed away following a long battle with breast cancer. Thomas Søndergård will lead performances at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis.
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