San Francisco Opera Opens 102nd Season With Opera in the Park

San Francisco Opera will celebrate the opening of its 102nd season with San Francisco Chronicle Presents Opera in the Park on Sunday, September 8 at 1:30 p.m. The free concert—a beloved annual Bay Area tradition now in its 49th year—takes place at Robin Williams Meadow in Golden Gate Park.

San Francisco Opera General Director Matthew Shilvock is emcee for the event and Music Director Eun Sun Kim conducts the San Francisco Opera Orchestraand stars of the Company’s 2024–25 Season. Soloists for the Opera in the Park concert include sopranos Lianna Haroutounian, Toni Marie Palmertree, Arianna Rodriguez, Olivia Smith and Mei Gui Zhang; mezzo-sopranos Judit Kutasi, Nikola Printz and Irene Roberts; tenors Michael Fabiano, Thomas Kinch and Alek Shrader; baritones Aleksey Bogdanov, Amartuvshin Enkhbat and Samuel Kidd; bass-baritone Jongwon Han; and bass John Relyea.

The concert will feature arias and duets from the operatic repertoire by composers including Bizet, Gounod, Meyerbeer, Mozart, Puccini, and Verdi along with selections from musical theater. The afternoon ends with an Opera in the Park tradition: an audience sing-along of Verdi’s famous “Libiamo,” the drinking song from La Traviata.

The San Francisco Chronicle is the presenting partner for Opera in the Park. San Francisco Opera also extends special thanks to San Francisco Parks Alliance and San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department for their support of this Bay Area tradition, which is made possible, in part, by Opening Weekend Grand Sponsor Diane B. Wilsey with additional support provided by the William & Gretchen Kimball Fund and Kaiser Permanente. Classical KDFC is Radio Partner and Kaiser Permanente is Corporate Sponsor.

Established by former San Francisco Opera General Director Kurt Herbert Adler in 1971, the Opera in the Park concert celebrating the opening of the San Francisco Opera season draws thousands of music lovers annually for a free afternoon of arias, duets and popular songs in San Francisco's spacious Golden Gate Park. Many of opera's legendary figures, such as Luciano Pavarotti, Montserrat Caballé, Marilyn Horne and Renata Scotto, have performed at Opera in the Park.

San Francisco Opera’s 102nd season at the War Memorial Opera House opens on September 6, 2024 with Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera (running through September 27). The Fall Season continues with the West Coast premiere of The Handmaid’s Tale, composer Poul Ruders and librettist Paul Bentley’s acclaimed operatic adaptation of the best-selling novel by Margaret Atwood (September 14–October 1); followed by Wagner’s path-breaking masterpiece Tristan und Isolde (October 19–November 5); a sold-out concert performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in honor of the work’s 200th anniversary (October 26); Bizet’s Carmen (November 13–December 1); and the immersive half-opera, half-party Carmen Encounter (November 21). The 2025 Summer Season includes Puccini’s La Bohème (June 3–21); Mozart’s early masterpiece Idomeneo (June 14–25); and a special Pride Concert celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community (June 27). For more information about San Francisco Opera’s 2024–25 Season, visit sfopera.com.

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