performers on stage dancing

Past Performances

Opera Santa Barbara recently celebrated its 30th Anniversary Season. The company has staged more than 70 operas and is committed to producing a diverse repertoire of traditional and contemporary operas.

Pagliacci initial art

Friday, November 8; Sunday, November 10

Ruggero Leoncavallo, 1892

A classic tale of lust, jealousy, and murder inside a troupe of comedians. This new production by Octavio Cardenas and Daniel Chapman is set in 1930’s Italy, inspired by Italian neorealist cinema.  

Genre: Drama/Thriller
Running time: 1 hour and 30 minutes including intermission
Language: Italian with English supertitles
Venue: Lobero Theatre

Figaro Ship Graphic

Friday, February 21; Sunday, February 23

Wolfgang A. Mozart, 1786

Mozart’s masterpiece of seduction, mistaken identities, and master/servant rivalries set on a luxury ocean liner in the 1930’s.  Projection and set design by Sara Widzer and Yuki Izumihara, who created Opera SB’s Semele at the Lobero in January 2022.  Starring a Southern California cast featuring almuni of our Chrisman Studio Program including Colin Ramsey, Sunwoo Park, and Jennifer Lindsay. Kostis Protopapas conducts the Opera Santa Barbara Chorus and Orchestra. 

Genre: Romantic Comedy set on an Ocean liner in the 1930s
Running time: 3 hours
Language: Italian with English supertitles
Venue: Lobero Theatre

Daughter of the Regiment initial art

Friday, May 2; Sunday, May 4

Gaetano Donizetti , 1840

A girl raised on the battlefield by a rowdy French Regiment falls in love with an enemy peasant boy, in the ultimate bel canto romantic comedy full of melodies and vocal fireworks. Starring Jana McIntyre, and directed by Pacific Opera Project’s irrepressible Josh Shaw.

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Running time: 2 hours and 30 mins
Language: French with English supertitles
Venue: Lobero Theatre

Fri, Sep 29, 2023 (7:30pm) & Sun, Oct 1, 2023 (2:30pm)

Georges Bizét, 1875

Georges Bizet’s verismo opera ‘Carmen,’ based on a French novella, is about a fiery young woman who seduces a soldier, ultimately leading to his demise.

Genre: Drama set in Seville, Spain around 1820
Running time: 3 hours
Language: French with English supertitles
Venue: Granada Theatre

Fri, Nov 10, 7:30pm - SB & Sun, Nov 12, 2:00pm - Thousand Oaks

Greek soprano Eleni Calenos, has portrayed Puccini and Verdi heroines throughout the United Stated in performances that were hailed as “for the ages, both vocally and dramatically”  by Opera News,  “searing…, mercurial, heart-on-the sleeve” by The Wall Street Journal, and “a true wonder” by the Houston Press.  

Metropolitan Opera Competition 2022 Grand Prize winner Jana McIntyre has performed with Santa Fe Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Arizona opera, in addition to several roles with Opera Santa Barbara.  Jana, whose repertoire includes baroque and bel canto operas, contemporary works, and musical theater, has been praised for her “dancer’s grace, mercurial wit, and vibrant soprano tone” by Opera News and her “…movie star looks and the poise to match” by Opera Wire.  

The program will include selections from Maria Callas’ signature repertoire, such as The Barber of Seville, Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto, and Norma.

Dec 1–3, 2023

Xavier Montsalvatge , 1948

El Gato con Botas originally premiered in Barcelona in 1948. Rarely performed, this age-old children’s story tells of the wealth-seeking, match-making cat who, in return for a hat, a sword and a pair of boots, secures for his young master (a lowly miller) a kingdom and a royal marriage to a princess, tricking a slow-witted ogre out of his castle along the way.

From its opening Montsalvatge’s music is energetic, tuneful and full of catchy rhythms, lush melodies and feline musical effects!

(via MidWalesOpera)

This one hour production features current and former members of our Chrisman Studio Artist Program and is perfect for the whole family.

 

Fri, Feb 9, 2024 (7:30pm) & Sun, Feb 11, 2024 (2:30pm)

Giuseppe Verdi, 1853

Verdi’s dark historical melodrama Il Trovatore (“The troubadour”) is a story of superstition, revenge, and ill-fated love set in medieval Spain and contains some of Verdi’s most passionate melodies including the famous “Anvil Chorus”.

 

Genre: Historical drama
Running time: 2 hr 30 minutes
Language: Italian with projected English surtitles
Venue: Lobero Theatre

Fri, Apr 19, 2024 (7:30pm) & Sun, Apr 21, 2024 (2:30pm)

Héctor Armienta, 2022

Hector Armienta’s swashbuckling adventure Zorro is based on the adventures of Johnston McCully’s legendary pulp hero, the dashing masked vigilante who defends the commoners and indigenous peoples of California against tyrannical officials. 

Genre: Adventure Opera
Running time: 2 hours
Language: Sung in English and Spanish with surtitles
Venue: Lobero Theatre

tosca poster art

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.

Genre: Drama set in Rome c. 1850
Running time: 2 hours and 5 minutes
Language: Italian with English surtitles
Venue: Granada Theatre

la scala de seta poster art

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.

Genre: Comedy
Running time: 90 minutes
Language: Italian with English surtitles
Venue: Lobero Theatre

scene from An American Dream

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.

Genre: WWII Drama set in the Pacific Northwest
Running time: 70 minutes
Language: English with surtitles
Venue: Lobero Theatre

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.

Genre: Romantic Drama
Running time: 2 hours and 30 minutes
Venue: Center Stage Theater

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.

Genre: Fantasy/Epic Set in Northern Europe
Running time: 2 hours and 50 minutes
Language: German with English surtitles
Venue: Lobero Theatre

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performers on stage