Detroit Opera Reveals 2024-25 Season

Detroit Opera has announced its 2024–25 Opera and Dance seasons under the leadership of President and CEO Patty Isacson Sabee, Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director Yuval Sharon, Associate Artistic Director Christine Goerke, Music Director Roberto Kalb, and Artistic Advisor for Dance Jon Teeuwissen.

The season, featuring four opera productions and six dance presentations, will open on October 19 with Verdi’s La traviata at the Detroit Opera House, directed by Francesca Zambello and conducted by Roberto Kalb. The dance season will begin on November 2 with Mark Morris Dance Group performing The Look of Love, an homage to Burt Bacharach with musical collaborator Ethan Iverson. 

2024–25 Opera Season

The 2024–25 opera season will feature four operas written over three centuries: Handel’s Rinaldo and Mozart’s Così fan tutte from the 1700s, Verdi’s 1853 masterwork La Traviata and Anthony Davis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Central Park Five from 2020. The season will feature major house debuts by directors Francesca Zambello, Louisa Proske, and Nataki Garrett, as well as by German conductor Corinna Niemeyer and American conductor Anthony Parnther. 

“One of Detroit Opera’s central missions is to engage people with the relevant issues of our time,” says President and CEO Patty Isacson Sabee. “We’ll present the world premiere of Yuval Sharon’s futuristic new production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, which could not be more timely as we ponder the role of Artificial Intelligence in today’s world. During the 2024–25 season we will present Anthony Davis’s award-winning 2020 opera The Central Park Five, conducted by Anthony Parnther, one of the foremost interpreters of Davis’s music. I’m proud that three of our four opera directors will be women, and that countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo—one of the most captivating stage performers in all of opera—will sing the title role of Handel’s Rinaldo. Six top ballet and contemporary dance companies from around the world will be coming to Detroit, in many cases performing to live music. As we strive to make Detroit Opera a gathering space for the city of Detroit, we are also fortunate, under our current artistic leadership, to have gained a reputation as a company that does things differently and is emerging as a national leader in opera and dance. We honor these art forms by giving them a home where they can evolve and change.”

Detroit Opera’s season-opening production of La traviata (Oct. 19–27, 2024) will feature two rising singers making their Detroit Opera debuts—soprano Emily Pogorelc as Violetta and tenor Galeano Salas as Alfredo—and world-renowned baritone Rod Gilfry in a role debut as Germont. Music Director Roberto Kalb will conduct Francesca Zambello’s staging, which has been performed as a co-production of Washington National Opera, Glimmerglass Festival, Indiana University, Seattle Opera, and Atlanta Opera. In this subtle, elegant updating of the love story between the courtesan Violetta and the nobleman Alfredo, the action moves from the mid-1800s to the 1920s. Zambello takes a progressive look at gender relations, focusing on society’s changing views about women, in this well-loved story about love and sacrifice that has been widely viewed as misogynist. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote that Zambello’s staging “seems destined to please purists, as well as those who’ve never experienced the classic before.”

Handel’s Rinaldo (Feb. 22–March 2, 2025) will be only the third Handel opera to be produced at Detroit Opera, following Giulio Cesare in 2012 and Xerxes in 2023. Rinaldowill feature in the title role Anthony Roth Costanzo, one of the great countertenors of our time. Rinaldo is a Baroque blockbuster filled with spectacular arias, most famously “Lascia ch’io pianga” (Let me weep), which Roth Costanzo recorded on his Glass/Handel album and which has been performed by singers ranging from Joyce DiDonato, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and Daniel Moody to Montserrat Caballé and Barbra Streisand—it’s also been prominently featured in films such as Farinelli and Antichrist. The cast will include Cuban-American soprano Elena Villalón as Almirena and, as Armida, soprano Nicole Heaston, praised by the New York Times for her “radiant” and “handsomely resonant voice.” Music Director Roberto Kalb will conduct German-American director Louisa Proske’s staging, first produced by the Glimmerglass Festival in 2023. Proske—co-founder and former co-artistic director of Heartbeat Opera in NYC, and currently associate artistic director and resident director of Germany’s Oper Halle—has updated Rinaldo, a love story between Rinaldo and Almirena, set in Jerusalem during the time of the Christian Crusasdes in the eleventh century. Here, the action is framed through the lens of a child’s fantasy in a contemporary pediatric ward. The young patients venture on a heroic journey, where knights, sorcerers, monsters, and magic are used as a salve for unimaginable challenges.

Yuval Sharon’s new production of Così fan tutte (April 5–13, 2025) is a futuristic take on Mozart’s dark comedy about human relationships—an exploration of Artificial Intelligence, with Don Alfonso’s “school for lovers” recast as a laboratory where the four lovers are his robotic inventions, created with the support of Despina. The two couples play out their creator’s Faustian manipulations, with each push of their emotional buttons ultimately proving the predictability of all human interactions. Corinna Niemeyer will make her U.S. conducting debut with Così. The cast will include, as the opera’s two central couples, soprano Amina Edris (Fiordiligi), mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce (Dorabella), tenor Joshua Blue (Ferrando), and baritone Thomas Lehman (Guglielmo). Baritone Ed Parks will sing the role of Don Alfonso, and soprano Ann Toomey will be featured as Despina. 

“This new take on Mozart’s most controversial comedy will be an exploration of Artificial Intelligence,” says Sharon. “With a resolutely futuristic look, the comedy of Così will emerge in a surprisingly organic way. The production explores the connection between the Enlightenment-era belief of ‘humans as machines,’ the origin for contemporary explorations of what current thinkers are imagining as the ‘post-human,’ or ‘Humanity 2.0.’ As anxieties proliferate about AI, this production offers the opportunity for reflection on this phenomenon in a way that only opera can.”

The 2024–25 opera season will conclude with Anthony Davis’s gripping The Central Park Five (May 10–18, 2025), a true-story adaptation of systemic discrimination that earned Davis the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2020. The opera, with a libretto by Richard Wesley, tells the story of the wrongful convictions of five African American and Latino men in the assault of a white female jogger in Central Park. The Pulitzer Prize committee praised The Central Park Five as “a courageous operatic work, marked by powerful vocal writing and sensitive orchestration, that skillfully transforms a notorious example of contemporary injustice into something empathetic and hopeful.” The Central Park Five will be directed by Nataki Garrett in a production first seen at Portland Opera in 2022. Anthony Parnther, who conducted Long Beach Opera’s performances of The Central Park Five in 2022, will conduct the opera, which will feature a new, larger orchestration. The Central Park Five cast will include mezzo-soprano Catherine Martin as the Assistant District Attorney, tenor Bernard Holcomb as Kevin Richardson, tenor Nathan Granner as Korey Wise, and bass-baritone Justin Hopkins as Antron McCray.The Central Park Five is one of eight operas written by Davis, including X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, first performed in 1986 at New York City Opera and most recently performed at Detroit Opera in 2022, in a groundbreaking co-production that later traveled to the Metropolitan Opera. 

2024–25 Dance Season 

On November 2–3, 2024, Mark Morris Dance Group will open the 2024–25 Dance at Detroit Opera Season, the first of six dance companies to perform at the Detroit Opera House through April 2025. The season will also feature Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (November 23–24, 2024), Complexions Contemporary Ballet (December 7–8, 2024), Twyla Tharp Dance (Feb. 1–2, 2025), Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (March 14–16, 2025), and Malandain Ballet Biarritz (April 26–27, 2025).

“The new season of dance at the opera house is both serious and fun, robust and eclectic, purposely reflecting no singular aesthetic,” says Artistic Advisor for Dance Jon Teeuwissen. “What all six companies have in common is quality, creativity and innovation. The season includes some of the world’s foremost choreographers, but as dancers know, it’s not always about the steps—it’s about what the dance makes you feel, and where you are going in your head and in your heart. Dance moves us, literally and figuratively, and has the ability to connect us with our own humanity. I’m thrilled that so many dance performances will be accompanied by live music, ranging from musicians from our own Detroit Opera Orchestra to solo piano to the Chicago-based ensemble Third Coast Percussion.”

For Mark Morris Dance Group’s two performances of The Look of Love in November, Mark Morris teams up with musical collaborator Ethan Iverson for this wistful and heartfelt homage to the chart-topping songs of Burt Bacharach. In popular music, Bacharach is known for his soaring melodies and unique orchestrations influenced by jazz, rock, and Brazilian music. Mark Morris describes the work as “an action-packed, music-drenched, dance-saturated evening for everybody.” The Look of Love features original choreography by Morris and new musical arrangements by Iverson, performed by an ensemble of piano, trumpet, bass, and drums, joined by vocalist, actor and Broadway performer Marcy Harriell.

The world’s foremost all-male comic ballet company celebrating its 50th year, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, brings its internationally beloved troupe of male dancers to Detroit in November to perform a brilliant combination of skillful pointe work and hilarious parodying of classical ballet favorites such as Swan Lake, Paquita and The Dying Swan. Les Ballets Trockadero, also known as The Trocks, is an ensemble of the highest technically proficient dancers that parodies the conventions of Romantic and Classical ballet, while making serious statements about gender identity and equality. The Trocks will be accompanied by live music from the Detroit Opera Orchestra.

New York City-based Complexions Contemporary Ballet will make its Detroit Opera House debut in December with two performances during the company’s 30th-anniversary tour. Under co-Artistic Directors and dance icons Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, Complexions Contemporary Ballet has awakened audiences to a new, exciting genre with their singular approach of reinventing dance and contemporary ballet. This program will feature choreography to music by Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, and Helbig, performed by the Detroit Opera Orchestra. The program will feature Complexions’ signature piece, Ave Maria, with music by vocalist Brianna Robinson. The program Will Close with Love Rocks with music by singer/songwriter Lenny Kravitz. This will be a co-presentation with Music Hall. 

Twyla Tharp Dance celebrates the company’s 60th anniversary with a Diamond Jubilee coast-to-coast tour that comes to Detroit Opera House in February. Performances will feature Tharp’s Olivier-nominated Diabelli Variations, set to Beethoven’s masterpiece of the same name. In taking on this intensely demanding and complex work for piano, Tharp highlights the elegant humor and depth of Beethoven’s composition. The program will also feature a new work in collaboration with composer Philip Glass, their first since 1986. A reimagining of Glass’s Aguas da Amazonia score is augmented with new music, and accompanied live by Chicago-based Third Coast Percussion, performed on that ensemble’s unique collection of custom-designed percussion instruments.

Detroit favorite Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater returns to the Detroit Opera House for three performances in March. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater grew from a now-fabled performance in March 1958 at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Led by Alvin Ailey and a group of young African American modern dancers, that performance changed forever the perception of American dance. The Ailey company has performed for an estimated 25 million people at theaters in 48 states and 71 countries on six continents, as well as millions more through television broadcasts, film screenings, and online platforms. Today, the company continues Ailey's mission by presenting important works of the past and commissioning new ones. All programs will include Ailey’s iconic Revelations; the program’s remaining repertoire will be announced at a later date.

France’s Malandain Ballet Biarritz, who made their Detroit Opera House debut in February 2020, Will Close out the 2024–25 dance season with two performances of The Seasons in April, Artistic Director Thierry Malandain’s latest creation. This choreographic work was commissioned by Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal de Versailles to celebrate the work of Antonio Vivaldi, alongside the work of his contemporary, Giovanni Antonio Guido. This original production combines Vivaldi’s famous The Four Seasons and little-known music by Guido. Guido’s Seasons will evoke memories of “belle danse” (Baroque dance), which emerged in the 17th century from the ideal of governing one’s body and mind, and moving with grace, accuracy, and lightness. With Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, dancers are moved by a more natural, human form of dance.

Subscription packages starting at $100 are available now for purchase at detroitopera.org. The purchase of a subscription package includes priority seating, easy and free ticket exchanges, savings of up to 35 percent on tickets, exclusive access to pre-paid parking in the Opera House Parking Center, and additional perks. Visit Detroitopera.org or call 313-237-7464 for more details.

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