Dallas Opera announces 2024-25 season

Two classics never before performed by the Dallas Opera will headline the company’s 2024-25 season. Debussy’s Pelleas and Melisande and Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orpheus and Euridice will be bookended by the standard rep Verdi La traviata and Puccini’s La bohème. The company again is sticking to only four mainstage productions, although this concentration of resources has been yielding particularly fine performances.

The season also will include a People’s Choice concert, a concert featuring participants in the Hart Institute for Women Conductors, the Titus Family Recital with baritone Christian Gerhaher, two family operas (The Three Little Pigs and Pépito) and the Lone Star Vocal Competition.

(The announcement Anglicizes the titles of Pelléas et Mélisande and Orfeo ed Euridice, but not those of the Verdi and Puccini favorites. All four operas will be sung in their original languages, with projected English supertitles.)

Dreamy and mysterious, set in and around an old castle, Debussy’s opera is about an elusive but magnetic young woman, Melisande, who’s torn between two brothers, Golaud and Pelleas. Sensuous music captures the ambiguities of symbolist poet Maurice Maeterlinck’s libretto.

Baritone Benjamin Appl, whose performance of Schubert’s song cycle Die Winterreise in the Titus Family recital series was one of the musical highlights of 2022, will sing the part of Pelleas, with soprano Lauren Snouffer as Melisande and bass Nicolas Courjal as Golaud.

A co-production with Bavarian State Opera will be conducted by Ludovic Morlot.

Told by Virgil and Ovid, the legend of the doomed lovers Orpheus and Euridice has been adapted by poets, novelists, dramatists, filmmakers, composers and choreographers. Coming after the complicated plots and florid vocalism of baroque operas, Gluck’s original 1762 version, in Italian, was revolutionary in its directness. He later produced a considerably revised French version, but the opera will be performed here in the Italian original.

Music director Emmanuel Villaume will conduct a production designed and staged by Joachim Schamberger with countertenor Hugh Cutting as Orpheus, soprano Madison Leonard as Euridice and soprano Amber Norelai as Amore.

Villaume also will conduct La bohème in a revival of the company’s period production directed by Tomer Zvulun. Debuts will include Sylvia D’Eramo as Mimi, Bekhzod Davronov as Rodolfo, Takaoki Onishi as Marcello and Emily Pogorelc as Musetta.

La traviata will be presented in a co-production with Santa Fe Opera, directed by Louisa Muller, with Yaritza Véliz as Violetta, Xabier Anduaga as Alfredo and Alfredo Daza as Germont. Iván López Reynoso will conduct.

Here’s the schedule:

People’s Choice concert: Oct. 5

La traviata: Oct. 18, 20 (matinee), 23, 26 and 27 (matinee)

Pelleas and Melisande: Nov. 8, 10 (matinee), 13 and 16

Hart Institute Showcase Concert: Jan. 25, 2025

Christian Gerhaher Titus Family Recital: Jan. 26

Orpheus and Euridice: Feb. 7, 9 (matinee), 12 and 15

Lone Star Vocal Competition: March 7

La bohème: Feb. 28 and 2 (matinee), March 5, 8 and 9 (matinee)

Subscriptions are on sale now, with confirmed seating for new subscribers starting May 24. Single tickets go on sale July 22. The final matinee performances of La traviata and La bohème will be available only to single-ticket buyers. For information: 214-443-1000, dallasopera.org.