Opera Saturday nights return to Tucson in '26-27 season

The company, in its just announced 2026-27 season, is also giving us more opera: two fully-staged chamber-sized productions in the fall and two fully-staged mainstage productions in the spring.

"We are so excited," said Arizona Opera President and General Director Brian DeMaris. "When we looked at it, everyone agreed — audience, donors and our staff — we want more opera."

Next season is bookended by "Scalia/Ginsburg" — Derrick Wang's 2015 one-act comic opera about the real-life, unlikely friendship between Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia — and the return of Verdi's "La Traviata," which was last performed here in winter 2019. 

The upcoming season is the first since 2023-24 that the Tucson-born, Phoenix-based company will put on fully-staged productions with two performances each — on Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons — of chamber operas in the fall and bigger productions in the spring.

The company in the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons, citing financial restraints, presented just two productions, one fully staged and the other more of a concert performance. It also took away Tucson's Saturday night performance and the Sunday matinee and presented just a single Saturday matinee.

But under DeMaris, who succeeded Joseph Specter last May as president and general director, the company is returning to what DeMaris calls its mission, "which is to do opera."

"Our No. 1 goal was to add programming, just simply put, create programming, whatever the scope and scale," he said.

Specter, who led the company from 2016 through the 2024-25 season, blamed "an unprecedented time for the arts" when he announced the changes in spring 2024. He cited a dramatic drop in attendance that he largely attributed to a drawn-out post-pandemic hangover that was overwhelming arts organizations nationwide.

But DeMaris, noting that he's not sure he would not have followed Specter's lead two years ago, said the arts landscape has changed. 

"I think there have been lessons learned over the past couple years of what cutting programming does financially, as well as for the community, and the company's best hope is to restore programming, period," he said. "At a certain point, you cut so much that you have no revenue."

In that first truncated season, 2024-25, Arizona Opera mounted Puccini's "La Boheme," which DeMaris said did well in Tucson and Phoenix; and a concert version of Verdi's "Aida" in which Arizona Opera integrated a feature-length, Generative AI film into the live production featuring soprano Leah Hawkins. It was the first-ever AI-generated opera.

This season opened in October with Héctor Armienta‘s new opera “Zorro,” which had initially been on the 2024-25 season. DeMaris said the show sold well, which he attributed in part to the audiences recognizing the title. 

"Even though people didn't know the opera, they knew Zorro," he said.

This season's only other fully-staged opera was last month's new production of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly." DeMaris said performances in Tucson and Phoenix were near sellouts. 

"I was really buoyed by 'Butterfly,' which was really exceptionally well sold, and so was 'La Boheme' last year," he said, which led to the opera company's plan to return to four fully-stage productions next season. 

This season wraps up with a concert performance of Rossini's "La Cenerentola," which DeMaris said will feature costumes and ballroom staging with the orchestra performing on stage. The show comes to Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave., on April 25.

Next season's chamber operas in the fall will be held in Leo Rich Theater, across the plaza from Arizona Opera's longtime mainstage at the Music Hall. The springtime operas will be held in the Music Hall. Season subscribers can renew for the 2026-27 season through azopera.com; single tickets will be available later this spring.

• Derrick Wang's "Scalia/Ginsburg," Oct. 3-4: Go beyond the robes to see how conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg become unlikely friends in this "sharp, hilarious and unexpectedly moving operatic comedy."
• Xavier Montsalvatge's "El Gato con Botas" (Puss in Boots), Nov. 14-15: Néstor Luján wrote the libretto for this family-friendly one-act opera based on Charles Perrault's classic tale and sung in Spanish. 
• Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance," Feb. 6-7: This timeless operetta has it all: pirates, laugh out loud puns and romance wrapped around iconic songs — “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General,” "Poor Wand'ring One," "With Cat-Like Tread." 
• Verdi's "La Traviata," March 13-14: The last time Arizona Opera mounted this heartbreaking story of Violetta Valéry in 2019, you could hear the audience sobbing. This is a tearjerker wrapped in some of the most emotionally powerful and recognizable music in the operatic canon. 

Next season will also see the return of the Marion Roose Pullin Arizona Opera Studio, the company's young artists program that will celebrate its 20th year in the 2027-28 season. The program has been downsized over the last two seasons as part of the belt-tightening programs.