No Matter Your Taste, Pittsburgh Opera’s New Season Should Satisfy

Pittsburgh Opera announced its 2025-2026 season lineup Thursday. A world class opera company, Pittsburgh Opera offers both classic and contemporary works. I can attest, privileged as I am to review many of their productions, that the experience is both rich and amazing with top-notch talent, an exceptional orchestra, awesome sets, and dazzling costumes.

I was exposed to the magic of opera at a young age. As one of four kids in my family, I often listened to my father’s hi-fi on Sunday afternoons when he would play some scratchy LP of Madame Butterfly or Tosca, defending his command of our not-so-private den, but also crying to the emotive arias which no doubt brought back fond memories of his parents from whom he acquired the records. He carefully shelved his disks stored in brown paper sleeves bound in boxed sets illustrated with pictures of powder-wigged composers whose names I eventually learned. 

Pittsburgh Opera’s upcoming season is exciting with classics like Puccini’s La Boheme and Verdi’s Falstaff along with newer productions—Fellow Travelers, Curlew River, and the world premiere of Time to Act. The new season’s venues are the Benedum Center, the Byham Theater, Pittsburgh Opera’s headquarters at the Bitz Opera Factory, and for the first time, Calvary Episcopal Church

Pittsburgh Opera’s 87th Season

The Bohemian Condition

Testament to the artistic influence of opera, La Boheme by Puccini tells the story of four hungry artists who find fulfillment, despite their poverty and Bohemian squalor, in staying true to one another. The opera has inspired countless film, literary, dance, and stage adaptations, perhaps most notably the Broadway musical Rent. Nearly 125 years after its premiere, audiences still clamor to hear the seamstress Mimi complain about her snuffed candle while the poet Rodolfo warms her cold and withering hands. This is love in dramatic simplicity. La Boheme kicks off Pittsburgh Opera’s 2025-26 season in October with five performances at Benedum Center, October 18, 21, 23, 24 and 26.

Pride and Politics

Not all operas are old or classic. Some speak to modern prejudices and political intrigue in Washington, DC. Fellow Travelers premiered in 2016 with music by Gregory Spears and a libretto by Greg Pierce, based on the novel by Thomas Mallon. Set during the McCarthy era, a young crusader against communism comes to meet a dashing State Department official who takes the young man under his wing. Their sexual dalliance proves that the Red Scare holds nothing compared to homophobia, especially in the arena of pressure politics. Written and sung in English, the accessibility of Fellow Travelers to American audiences helps elucidate the rare means by which sung dialogue propels the magic of operatic story-telling. This modern masterpiece will take stage at the Byham Theater for three performances in November, specifically, 14,15 and 16.

Jesus in Japan

No, this opera has nothing to do with Christ sipping Kirin. But it is about Noh, the traditional Japanese theatrical style, as well as a Christian parable of grief and redemption. Curlew River, first performed in 1964, is the story of a madwoman who fears the worst for her son who has been lost for more than a year. While searching for him, she confronts a river she must cross by ferry. The ferryman, however, fearing her apparent madness refuses her passage until other travelers take pity on the woman’s plight. Curlew River is an English adaptation of the Noh play, Sumidigawa River, which composer Benjamin Britten first enjoyed while in Japan in 1956. The libretto is by William Plomer. Britten was a prolific, if unorthodox, composer of more than a dozen operas and film scores. To call his work experimental would only expose one’s ignorance in musical composition, but to the uninformed, Britten’s work is seemingly unique in rhythm and tonality. Curlew River will be performed at Calvary Episcopal Church, a fitting locale for Britten’s penchant for parables, come January 24, 27 and 30, and February 1. 

Now a World Premiere

Time to Act tells the story of high school students preparing to stage a production of Antigone when a new student arrives to participate. Something about her seems quite odd. Yet, quite possibly, a recent spate of school violence just has everyone on edge. Worry not, it’s time to act. With music by Laura Kaminsky and a libretto in English by Crystal Manich, Time to Act will have its world premiere—co-commissioned by the Pittsburgh Opera, Opera Montana, and Boston Conservatory at Berklee, with additional funding by Opera Santa Barbara—at the Bitz Opera Factory in the Strip District. First-ever performances may be enjoyed on February 28, March 3, 6 and 8.

And Finally, Falstaff

Opera buffo is opera that was written to please the common class by introducing comic storylines with endings that were happier than those written in the style of opera serio (written seriously for high society.) There is, perhaps, no finer example of the former than Verdi’s comic Falstaff, the opera that follows Shakespeare’s favorite buffoon who loves himself more than he does drinking hearty spirits or wooing the wealthy wives of Windsor. It’s all a merry romp of ridicule and revenge. With a libretto by Arrigo Boito, Giuseppe Verdi, the composer famous for writing more than 25 operas (including another Shakespearean adaptation, Otello,) wrote this as his last. He was 80 when it premiered in 1893 at La Scala. Almost as fine a venue as Milan’s, Pittsburgh’s Benedum Center will host four performances in April and May, rounding out the 87th season of Pittsburgh Opera. 

Pittsburgh’s renowned company offers much to make the experience easy. Ticket prices are extremely affordable, all productions offer projected English supertitles so you know what’s being sung, the music is performed live by Pittsburgh Opera’s astounding full orchestra, free, pre-curtain talks help give historical context to each production one hour before show time, and there are many opportunities (see the schedule) to meet the actors, performers and divas that sustain their craft because of enthusiastic audiences like ours in Pittsburgh. Opera may be a different flavor of theater, but it’s rich, rewarding and wonderful. For more information and subscriptions visit the Pittsburgh Opera website.

C. Prentiss Orr is a Pittsburgh-based writer who covers theater and other topics for Entertainment Central. He is the author of the books The Surveyor and the Silversmith and Pittsburgh Born, Pittsburgh Bred.

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