San Diego Opera Opens Its 2024-2025 Season with a Return to ‘La bohème’

San Diego Opera opens its 2024-2025 season on Friday, November 1, at San Diego Civic Theatre with a production of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème.

“We are celebrating San Diego Opera’s sixtieth season by opening with a production of the first opera the company presented,” explained General Director David Bennett.

Bennett has lined up an impressive cast for this well-known and frequently produced opera. Soprano Kathleen O’Mara will sing the title role of Mimi on November 1 and 3, and soprano Sarah Tucker will sing Mimi on November 2.

“Kathleen O’Mara just won First Prize in Operalia, the World Opera Competition held this year in Mumbai, India, so we are delighted that she will sing her first Mimi with us,” Bennett said.

Soprano Sarah Tucker is known to San Diego audiences for her passionate account of Fiordiligi in the San Diego company’s 2022 production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte. Since the company is presenting La bohème on three consecutive days, the role Mimi is too demanding for one singer so perform on that schedule, so it is double cast, as is the role of Rodolfo, which will be shared between tenors Joshua Blue and César Delgado. Soprano Latonia Moore gave San Diego Opera a radiant Cio-Cio-San in the company’s 2016 Madama Butterfly production, and since that production, Moore has become a regular at the Metropolitan Opera. She will sing Musetta in the upcoming La bohème.

Vivid in the memories of San Diego Opera regulars is the company’s 2020 drive-in production of La bohème staged in  the Pachenga Arena parking lot when the Covid lockdown had closed the theaters. Keturah Stickann, who directed that unusual production as a play in which the drama unfolded in Rodolfo’s memory–so the characters could convincingly maintain the required social distancing on stage–will return to direct the upcoming La bohème. To read an interview with Keturah Stickann, see the  SanDiegoStory’s interview “Stickann Returns to San Diego Opera for its Season-opening La-bohème.”

Since the 2024-2035 season was announced in May, David Bennett has added another performance to the season: on December

7, 2024, at 7:30 p.m., the company will present Making Merry, a holiday concert featuring the  San Diego Opera Chorus, soprano Alisa Jordhein–she sang an impressive Despina in the company’s 2022 Così fan tutte–and Civic Organist Raul Prieto Ramirez on the Balboa’s beautifully restored theater organ. Bennett stated that the variety of seasonal music would include audience sing-alongs.

This holiday concert takes the place of the vocal recitals that have for some time been part of the typical San Diego Opera season. “We presented two recitals last season,” Bennett explained, “but these programs have not resonated sufficiently with our audiences. Planning an opera season resembles the proverbial iceberg: the artistically satisfying part is what is visible to everyone, but the what is unseen below the surface is the financially viable portion of the equation.”

The season continues  in 2025, with Richard Strauss’s one-act tragedy Salome, playing March 21-23 at Civic Theatre.  The title role will feature soprano Marcy Stonikas, a commanding Gertrude in the company’s 2020 Hansel and Gretel production, and bass-baritone Kyle Albertson  in the role of Jochanaan. He sang an impressive Sparafucile in the company’s 2019 Rigoletto production.

Verdi’s La traviata caps the season with performances on April 25-27. Soprano Andriana Chuchman sings the title role of Violetta; she gave an outstanding performance of  Micaëla in the company’s 2017 production of La tragédie de Carmen, Peter Brook’s naturalistic remake of Bizet’s Carmen. Yves Abel, San Diego Opera’s Principal Conductor, will conduct both Salome and La traviata.

San Diego Opera opens its season with a production of Puccini’s ‘La bohème’ November 1-3, 2024, in the San Diego Civic Theatre.