LA TRAVIATA, THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO And More Come To Atlanta Opera for 2025-26 Season

The Atlanta Opera will embark on its 46th season in 2025-26. The season's six productions are themed to twilight and transformation, as exemplified by Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. General & Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun's new production of Wagner's Twilight of the Gods (“Götterdämmerung”), the fourth and final opera in The Atlanta Opera's Ring cycle, featuring Stefan Vinke, Lise Lindstrom, and Morris Robinson (May 30–June 7).

The completion of the Ring cycle comes at a transformative moment for the entire company, following the announcement of a leadership gift from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation to build the Molly Blank Center for Opera, named in honor of Arthur M. Blank's mother, a sculptor with a passion for the arts in many genres. In keeping with these milestones, the company's mainstage series at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre includes a stellar lineup of world-class voices, both new and familiar, performing a quartet of perennial classics, which besides Twilight of the Gods includes Verdi's La traviata featuring Mané Galoyan and Long Long and directed by Francesca Zambello (Nov 8–16); Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro with Sydney Mancasola and Luke Sutliff (March 14–22); and Angela Meade in the title role of a new Zvulun production of Puccini's Turandot opposite Piero Pretti (April 25–May 3).

The critically acclaimed Molly Blank Discoveries Series presents Philip Glass's opera for film and ensemble, La Belle et la Bête (Nov 15), and a co-production between The Atlanta Opera and Alliance Theatre of a blockbuster American musical to be announced this spring will open the season for both companies. All mainstage series productions will be livestreamed and filmed for release by The Atlanta Opera Film Studio (see below for more details).
 
Zvulun comments: “The 2025-26 season marks a major milestone in The Atlanta Opera history – the completion of our first Ring cycle with a new production of Wagner's Twilight of the Gods. In fact, this whole monumental season is peppered with the idea of twilight and transformation. Each of our 2025–26 operas captures the twilight of an era and the dawn of a new transformation: in addition to Wagner's Twilight, our mainstage productions will feature La traviata, Marriage of Figaro, Turandot and two major Discoveries series productions which will include Phillip Glass's La Belle et la Bête and a major Broadway musical to be announced soon, in partnership with The Alliance Theatre. It is the biggest, most exciting season in recent memory.”

Mainstage operas: twilight and transformation

The Atlanta Opera's 2025-26 mainstage season begins with Verdi's La traviata (Nov 8–16), in a staging by internationally lauded American director Francesca Zambello. Armenian soprano Mané Galoyan, winner of the 2021 Operalia Second Prize, Zarzuela Prize, and Rolex Audience Prize, and described by Vienna's Online Merker as “nothing short of magical," sings the role of Violetta, with tenor Long Long bringing “a glorious voice, even across all registers with an ideal combination of ardour and flexibility” (Bachtrack) to the role of Alfredo, and “warm-toned, vivacious, and humane” (San Francisco Chronicle) baritone Anthony Clark Evans as his father, Giorgio Germont. Evan Rogister, Principal Conductor of Washington National Opera and the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, is on the podium.
 
Next up in the season is a production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (March 14–22). In the role of Susanna is Sydney Mancasola, whose performance as Bess in Breaking the Waves at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival earned raves from Seen and Heard International, which called her “a marvel, extracting every scintilla of possibility from her soprano voice, from euphoria to misery via delirium.” The production also stars Luke Sutliff – who sang Papageno in last season's The Magic Flute – as Count Almaviva, “radiantly clear” (Sydney Morning Herald) Romanian soprano Iulia Maria Dan as Countess Almaviva, and “immediately beguiling” (Opera Today) Tunisian-Canadian mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb as Cherubino. British director Stephen Lawless helms the production.
 
Zvulun's new production of Puccini's timeless opera Turandot – premiering on the 100th anniversary of the opera's premiere – features “astounding” (The New Yorker) American soprano Angela Meade in the title role, which she inaugurated just last season at LA Opera, when ArtsBeat LA found that she “rose to the occasion magnificently … capturing the character's inner turmoil with grace and power” (April 25–May 3). Opposite Meade as Calaf is Sardinian tenor Piero Pretti, a regular at La Scala since his debut in 2012 who has also sung Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly and Alfredo in La traviata at the Metropolitan Opera. Armenian soprano Juliana Grigoryan sings Liù, the role that served as the vehicle for her Met debut last season, and bass Peixin Chen, who sang Sarastro in The Atlanta Opera's Magic Flute last season, sings the role of Timur. On the podium for Turandot will be young Mexican conductor Iván López-Reynoso, who since his operatic conducting debut in 2010 at the age of 20 has helmed more than 50 productions.

Twilight of the Gods – fourth and final opera in The Atlanta Opera's Ring Cycle

Following productions of Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Siegfried in The Atlanta Opera's Ring cycle over the past three seasons, Twilight of the Gods (“Götterdämmerung”) closes the cycle with a vision of the downfall of the old gods and burning of Valhalla and an implicit promise of the renewal of the world (May 30–June 7). With a superb cast starring “impassioned” (Parterre Box 2022) heldentenor Stefan Vinke, “a seasoned Wagnerian” (The Seattle Times), this all-new Tomer Zvulun production also features Lise Lindstrom, a “deeply sympathetic, vocally magnificent Brünnhilde” (Classical Voice America), and Atlanta Opera favorite Morris Robinson – returning to the company after his turn as Banquo in last season's Macbeth – in the role of the villainous Hagen. Conducting the production will be the Mexican-born music director of Detroit Opera, Roberto Kalb.

Molly Blank Discoveries Series

The Atlanta Opera's Molly Blank Discoveries Series – renamed in honor of the Blank family's inspirational matriarch – continues its long-standing collaboration with the Alliance Theatre, the leading producing theater in the Southeast, to co-produce and present a major American musical to be announced this spring. More than 30 performances are planned for the all-new production in September 2025.
 
Rounding out the fall schedule is a second Discoveries series production, a special presentation of Philip Glass's opera for film and ensemble, La Belle et la Bête (“Beauty and the Beast”), composed to accompany the classic film by poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau (Nov 15). La Belle et la Bête is the second of a trilogy of works Glass composed in the 1990s as an homage to Cocteau, and it uses a French libretto by the composer himself based on Cocteau's film script. The evening will be capped off by a masquerade for the entire audience in the lobby with music and refreshments available. Tickets include both the film and the party, and audience members are encouraged to dress and mask for the occasion.

Molly Blank Center for Opera

The leadership gift from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation announced this past fall jumpstarts the transformative landmark project of building the Molly Blank Center for Opera, which will involve renovating and expanding the historic Bobby Jones Clubhouse that opened in 1941. The completed project will feature state-of-the-art facilities including a 200-seat recital hall, rehearsal spaces, administrative offices, and gardens, fostering a thriving cultural hub that reflects The Atlanta Opera's continuing commitment to growing its connection to the Atlanta community and enhancing the city's rich cultural landscape. Construction is scheduled to be completed in summer 2027.

Award-winning new works initiative – 96-Hour Opera Festival (June 17–22, 2025)

Now in its fourth season, The Atlanta Opera's 96-Hour Opera Project and Festival celebrates the artistry of creative talents and offers a path into the art of opera. Launched as the 96-Hour Opera Project, the Festival expanded from the original composition competition to include developmental workshops and incubator performances of works by past competition winners. The competition remains the heart of the Festival and invites composers and librettists to write ten-minute operas that are judged by industry leaders , who have included Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist Mark Campbell, award-winning actress and director Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, New York Times bestselling author Andrea Davis Pinkney, and other experienced leaders in the industry.
 
This season's Festival, presented again at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center on the campus of community partner Morehouse College, will feature the premiere of Steele Roots by composer Dave Ragland and librettist Selda Sahin, winners of the 2023 competition. Their chamber opera is based on the life and legacy of Carrie Steele Logan, a formerly enslaved woman who founded a home for orphaned children in Atlanta in the aftermath of the Civil War. Now known as the Carrie Steele-Pitts Home, this haven continues to serve the region's most vulnerable children to this day.

The Atlanta Opera Film Studio

Born from the crisis of the pandemic restrictions, The Atlanta Opera Film Studio has grown from a simple capture and replay initiative to engage quarantined patrons into a full-service production company that serves and enhances the mission of The Atlanta Opera in myriad ways. Cinematic operas are meticulously produced using a variety of capture and editing capabilities. The catalogue of titles (Finding Glory Denied, Julius Caesar, The Pirates of Penzance, Don Giovanni, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs and more) is distributed through a variety of channels including Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, and The Atlanta Opera Channel. In addition to the cinematic operas, livestream replays of productions, documentaries, video shorts, educational films, promotional trailers, the Blink series, a “Five Things” video series, and much more content is available to engage and support enquiry into opera and specific productions of The Atlanta Opera. With most content available free, the work of The Film Studio reaches an expanding number of viewers in metro Atlanta and around the world, with accounts on six continents. Mainstage productions are presented online for livestream viewing on the Friday evening performances. Many livestreams are then available for replay from previous seasons at stream.atlantaopera.org/browse. Viewing most content requires only an email registration. To view the cinematic operas produced at The Atlanta Opera, a $25 annual subscription is required.

Community Education Tour and livestreams

The Atlanta Opera Studio Tour for the 2025-26 season will reach more than 260 schools and nearly 100,000 students with a live or virtual presentation of Mozart's The Magic Flute, in an abridged, student-friendly English version. Designed to travel, Studio Tour productions are presented in schools and community venues across the state of Georgia, and the virtual version is offered free to any educator, anywhere, for the classroom. Educators are provided with comprehensive guides that feature lesson plans and activities corresponding to the Georgia Standards of Excellence. Teachers are welcome to inquire about access to the Studio Tour at education@atlantaopera.org.

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