Detroit Opera’s 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 Cesarein 2012 and Xerxes in 2023. Rinaldo will 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 asFarinelli 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. 

Detroit Opera (formerly Michigan Opera Theatre), one of the nation’s most vibrant nonprofit arts organizations, aspires to influence the future of opera and dance with a goal of invigorating audiences through new and re-imagined productions, relevant to current times. It is creating an ambitious standard for American opera and dance that emphasizes community, accessibility, artistic risk-taking, and collaboration. Founded in 1971 by the late Dr. David DiChiera, Detroit Opera is led by President and CEO Patty Isacson Sabee; Yuval Sharon, Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director; Associate Artistic Director Christine Goerke; Music Director Roberto Kalb; Artistic Advisor for Dance Jon Teeuwissen; and Board Chairman Ethan Davidson. For more information, visit www.detroitopera.org. Follow the company on Facebook and Instagram (@DetroitOpera), LinkedIn (Detroit Opera), and X/Twitter (@DetOperaHouse).