Past Performances
The powerhouse names of Puccini, Rossini, and Wagner headline Opera Santa Barbara’s 2022-23 season, which will include a work by each composer. In addition, the California premiere of Jack Perla and Jessica Murphy Moo’s An American Dream, and the Santa Barbara premiere of the award-winning Broadway hit The Light in the Piazza.
In a notable departure from prior seasons, Opera Santa Barbara will present a single performance of each work. “For a long time the Santa Barbara performing arts scene has been inundated with more events than a city of 100,000 people can reasonably support”, said Opera SB Artistic and General Director, Kostis Protopapas. “This situation has been greatly exacerbated by the slow return of audiences after the pandemic. Presenting only one performance of each opera will enable us to deploy our resources more effectively, keep our artistic quality high, and better focus on those audiences old and new that most appreciate our work. At the same time, we will be doing our part towards creating a more sustainable arts ecosystem for everyone.”
Giacomo Puccini, 1900
The great diva has it all: beauty, talent, friends in high places, love, and an unshakeable faith in God. She lives a charmed life, blissfully unaware of the dystopia that surrounds her. All that will change in one harrowing day and night, in Puccini’s nail-biting melodrama.
Gioachino Rossini, 1812
Every night beautiful Giulia lowers a silk ladder from her window for her lover to climb to her bedroom. A series of misunderstandings turns their little love nest into a circus of relatives, suitors, and servants plotting, eavesdropping, and ultimately happily reconciling, in a blast of Rossini’s glorious vocal acrobatics.
Jack Perla, 2013
Treasured possessions become symbols of their lost homes for two women during World War II: a Japanese American facing incarceration and a German Jewish immigrant preoccupied by those she left behind, in Jack Perla’s 2013 drama.
Adam Guettel, 2005
March 23, 24, 25 and 26
Based on the 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer, The Light in the Piazza tells the story of Margaret Johnson, a wealthy Southern woman and her daughter Clara, who falls in love with a young Italian man during a vacation in Italy.
Richard Wagner, 1870
Lovers Siegmund and Sieglinde provoke the wrath of the Gods of Valhalla, who decree the death of Siegmund. Brünnhilde, the titular Valkyrie, defies her father Wotan, leader of the gods, to rescue Sieglinde and the couple’s unborn child.
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