Chautauqua Opera Company’s 2026 Season

For its 2026 season, Chautauqua Opera Company deepens its commitment to developing new operas while bringing fully staged productions to Chautauqua Institution’s Amphitheater.    

The company’s mainstage production will be an eclectic triple-bill of operas which have a historic connection to Chautauqua: Richard Wargo’s The Music Shop, Kamala Sankaram and Jerre Dye’s A.E. Reverie, and the world premiere of Jeremy Gill and Jerre Dye’s Ida by Lamplight.  In the weeks surrounding this production, the company will conduct workshops of four new operas, ranging from chamber operas to large-scale pieces. In these workshops, Chautauqua Opera Company’s 16 Young Artists will collaborate with celebrated composers, librettists and singers, and Chautauqua audiences will have the exclusive opportunity to experience these new operas in their developmental stages.   

The first two weeks of the 2026 season are dedicated to a piano vocal workshop of Act 2 of Mark Adamo’s Sarah in the Theatre, commissioned by Odyssey Opera. The workshop will conclude with a public presentation of excerpts, followed by a conversation with Adamo.  Later in the season the company will hold piano vocal workshops of two new operas by composer Luna Pearl Woolf, both adaptations of beloved novels—John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany (libretto by Woolf) and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (libretto by Royce Vavrek).  Excerpts from both works in process will be presented on August 6, followed by a conversation with the creators and commissioners.   The final ten days of the company’s season will be dedicated to an orchestral workshop of Herschel Garfein’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, based on the play by the late Tom Stoppard.  Excerpts from the opera will be presented on the stage of Norton Hall with members of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra on August 7, 2026.  The Music Shop, A.E. Reverie, Ida by Lamplight, and all workshops will be conducted by General and Artistic Director Steven Osgood.