Curtis Opera Theatre
Visionary productions and extraordinary musicianship.
The promising young artists of Curtis Opera Theatre collaborate with renowned conductors, directors, and designers to present fresh and passionate performances from across the operatic repertoire. Through visionary productions and extraordinary musicianship, they engage audiences with dynamic interpretations. Curtis’ voice and opera students feature prominently throughout the season, gaining formative performance experience to fuel their careers with top opera companies across the United States and Europe, including La Scala, Covent Garden, the Vienna Staatsoper, Houston Grand Opera, San Francisco Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera.
2025/26 Season
L'Orfeo
November 14 & 16, 2025 | Mainstage Theater, Philadelphia Film Center
Curtis Opera Theatre presents L’Orfeo, Monteverdi’s groundbreaking masterpiece that reshaped opera. Renowned conductor David Stern leads the cast of rising opera stars in acclaimed director and playwright John Matsumoto Giampietro’s production. Premiered in 1607, L’Orfeo merges Renaissance polyphony with Baroque drama—a stunning musical experience that places raw human emotions at its core.
La Passion de Simone
February 26 & 28, 2026 | Mainstage Theater, Philadelphia Film Center
Experience a mesmerizing meditation on faith, sacrifice, and resistance by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho in a “Musical Journey in 15 Stations.” Directed by Marcus Shields and conducted by Marc Lowenstein, this opera-oratorio explores the life and writings of the radical French philosopher and activist Simone Weil through a stunning fusion of music, poetry, and theater.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
April 30 & May 2, 2026 | Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center
Magic and mischief intertwine in Benjamin Britten’s enchanting adaptation of William Shakespeare’s romantic comedy. Critically acclaimed director Sarah Ina Meyers and dynamic international conductor Vinay Parameswaran lead a dazzling cast of young opera stars in this spellbinding production where feuding fairies meddle with mortals, hearts are led astray, and the surreal world of dreams blurs the edges of reality.
2025/26 Season
Great to Groundbreaking
The Comet / Poppea
November 1–3, 2024 | 23rd Street Armory
Curtis Opera Theatre launches the East Coast premiere of The Comet / Poppea, the MacArthur Award-winning composer George Lewis’ highly anticipated operatic setting of W.E.B. Du Bois’s proto-Afrofuturist science fiction short story, The Comet (1920), juxtaposed with Claudio Monteverdi’s hot-blooded political thriller, L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643).
Le nozze di Figaro
February 27–March 2, 2025 | Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center
Revel in Mozart and Da Ponte’s comic masterpiece, Le nozze di Figaro, (The Marriage of Figaro) where love, intrigue, and politics hilariously collide on the eve of Figaro and Susanna’s wedding.
Candide
April 11 & 13, 2025 | Forrest Theatre
Curtis Opera Theatre presents Leonard Bernstein’s timeless masterpiece, Candide. Filled with sparkling wit, soaring melodies, and globe-trotting grandeur, this bitingly clever adaptation of Voltaire’s philosophical French novella is an absurdist romp across “the best of all possible worlds.”
Special Thanks
The Curtis Opera Theatre is generously supported by the Ernestine Bacon Cairns Trust, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and the Wyncote Foundation.
Curtis Opera Theatre is a proud member of Opera America.
