Beginning in 2025, Sharon will curate season-long explorations of critical themes: America, Faith, and Sustainability

Detroit Opera President and CEO Patty Isacson Sabee, the Detroit Opera Board of Directors, and Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director Yuval Sharon announced today that they have agreed to extend Sharon’s current contract through the 2027/28 season. In 2020, Sharon became the company’s artistic director through an appointment made possible by a generous gift from Gary L. Wasserman.

The contract extension sets the stage for a new way for Detroit Opera to undertake artistic planning, with three seasons dedicated to individual centerpieces. The three focuses—America (2025/26), Faith (2026/27), and Sustainability (2027/28)—will not only shape the repertoire of those seasons, but they will act as organizing principles for all of Detroit Opera’s activities. From institutional decisions and creative choices to educational programs presented in collaboration with community partners, Sharon and Detroit Opera will sustain season-long conversations on each of the three themes. Individual operas and events for each season will be announced at later dates.

“Since I came to Detroit Opera in 2020, we have explored the environment of Detroit by staging operas in parking garages, at the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre, at the Gem Theatre, and more,” says Sharon. “Now, we would like to explore things that really matter to this community, by bringing the energy and originality of some of the site-specific pieces into the Detroit Opera House. Rather than working backwards from conventional repertoire to identify a common theme, we are starting from the focus and imagining an entire season’s activities around it.

“The specific topics were chosen for how they will intersect with the Detroit community: exploring what it means to be an American now, in the past, and what that could look like in the future; how we grapple with faith and how our places of worship, our city, and even the opera house can lead to deep, lasting, and meaningful change; and how the consequences of climate change may affect artistic expression moving forward—and vice versa. But beyond our operatic explorations of each theme, the work is going to take place backstage, within our company, and offstage, within the city. I’m looking forward to working together with our staff and community partners to create a sustained relationship with people of Detroit who are also concerned about these issues.”

The 2025/26 season, “America,” will be linked to the nationwide commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Sharon says, “With the core repertoire still consisting of so much European work, how can opera serve as a mechanism for the development of our own national consciousness? And at this critical moment in American democracy, how can opera best participate in the forging of our identity as Americans? The season will consist of both American works that offer an alternative view of what it means to be American alongside European composers who have made America the subject of their operas.”

“Faith” in the 2026/27 season will explore the relationship between faith, community, and the arts. Sharon says, “Detroit’s population is both deeply religious and religiously diverse. Faith groups have long shaped the city’s social fabric by providing space and inspiration for community building, activism, and advocacy. Detroit also benefits from faith in a secular sense, as a city whose recovery can be attributed to those who have remained devoted to the city, its people, and their collective future in the face of severe economic hardship.” Building on longstanding partnerships with local churches and faith organizations, Detroit Opera’s 2026/27 programming will address religious figures and stories, probing the common appeal of both religion and theater, and envision the opera house as a space in which belief becomes reality through radical collaboration.

“Sustainability” in the 2027/28 season will tackle environmental justice, climate change, and sustainability. In addition to opera programming that addresses themes of humanity’s relationship with the environment, this season’s focus will extend backstage to explore the ways in which sustainability informs creative decisions on an institutional level. From direct action such as sourcing materials and talent locally, to holistic measures by the company to limit consumption, waste, and carbon emissions, the 2027/28 season will call upon all members of the Detroit Opera community to demonstrate how sustainability can be infused into the very fabric of an opera company. 

“One of the ways Detroit Opera is engaging people is by highlighting relevant issues of our time,” says President and CEO Patty Isacson Sabee. “The season-long artistic explorations that we will present beginning in 2025/26 could not be more timely or relevant. As we strive to make Detroit Opera a gathering space for the city of Detroit, we are so fortunate to have gained a reputation as a company that does things differently and is emerging as a national leader in opera. This is due in large part to the artistic risk-taking that is happening under our current leadership. Yuval is opening up this art form to make it more accessible and welcoming to people from all backgrounds. He is marshaling the most innovative teams of sound designers, lighting designers, set designers, projection designers, and more, to create extraordinary productions that speak to the way we live now.”

“Four years ago, we had an unprecedented opportunity for change—for Detroit Opera to re-imagine the future of opera,” says Board President Ethan Davidson. “Back in 2020, Yuval Sharon’s appointment as artistic director allowed us to seize the chance to think in new ways about opera in this city, creating work that speaks to the communities that make Detroit so vibrant. In the time since then, we’ve been able to make opera and dance more accessible to a wider Detroit community. Under Yuval’s leadership, we will continue to use opera to lead conversations locally and nationally about some of the most critical issues of our time.”

In the years since Yuval Sharon became artistic director, Detroit Opera has expanded on its nationally recognized history of fairness, belonging, and representation by bringing more diverse voices and perspectives to its productions. These range from Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson’s Blue in 2021, staged by Kaneza Schaal, to Matthew Ozawa’s new co-production of Madame Butterfly in 2023/24 that featured an all-Japanese and Japanese American creative team. In the 2024/25 season, three out of four operas will be staged by women. Under Sharon’s leadership the company has also attracted audiences who are younger and more racially diverse. More than half the audience in the 2021 through 2024 fiscal years came from Generation X (born 1965 to 1980) or younger, representing a 12 percent increase from fiscal years 2019 and 2020. Over the same period, African American audiences more than doubled. Productions are also drawing in more first-time ticket buyers. In 2022, the percentage of the audience for X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X attending a Detroit Opera performance for the first time was 46 percent.

For more than a decade, Yuval Sharon has made a name for himself as an innovative opera director. As founder and co-artistic director of The Industry, he amassed a distinct body of work that blended the boundaries between the world of opera and its audiences, allowing the artform to embed itself within day-to-day spaces such as train stations, airplane hangars, and Los Angeles’s extensive network of roads and freeways. Later, as Artistic Director of Detroit Opera, he transformed the company into a premier destination for contemporary opera and a model for what an American opera company could become. Coupled with a three-year position as the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s first-ever Artist-Collaborator, including landmark productions of Meredith Monk’s ATLAS and John Cage’s Europeras 1&2, and stagings at companies including the Berlin Staatsoper, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Bayreuth Festival—where he was the first American ever to direct—Sharon’s impulse to advance the artform has transcended international boundaries and earned him accolades the world over. For his efforts, Sharon has earned a MacArthur Fellowship, a Foundation for Contemporary Art grant for theatre, and been named Musical America’s 2023 Director of the Year.

Detroit Opera aspires to influence the future of opera and dance by 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 as Michigan Opera Theatre by Dr. David DiChiera, Detroit Opera is led by President and CEO Patty Isacson Sabee; Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director Yuval Sharon; Music Director Roberto Kalb; and Board Chairman Ethan Davidson. For more information, visit www.detroitopera.org. Follow the company on Facebook and Instagram (@DetroitOpera), and LinkedIn (Detroit Opera).

Single tickets for Detroit Opera’s 2024/25 season go on sale August 1. Subscriptions are on sale now for the season, which will include Verdi’s La Traviata, Handel’s Rinaldo, Yuval Sharon’s new staging of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, and Anthony Davis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Central Park Five.

PHOTO: Yuval Sharon