In advance of Opera America’s 2025 Opera Conference in Memphis, Wise Music Classical is pleased to present a selection of highlights from our opera catalog that are currently being staged and performed around the world. From prescient allegories (Innocence, Angel’s Bone, The Handmaid’s Tale) to radical American works that can properly celebrate the 2026 U.S. semiquincentennial (Apartment House 1776, Down in the Valley), opera’s potential for impact on audiences and communities has never been greater.

Listen to a selection of recordings from these operas and other vocal music by their composers:

Upcoming Premieres

Hildegard, Sarah Kirkland Snider

Sarah Kirkland Snider’s debut opera is centered on Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th-century abbess, mystic, saint, and composer renowned both for her sacred monophony and her contributions to fields as diverse as theology, botany, and medicine. Snider’s narrative focuses on the emergent relationship between Hildegard and the young Richardis von Stade, a nun who served as Hildegard’s advisor and aided in the compilation of the visionary collection Scivias. Co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and Aspen Music Festival, Hildegard has its world premiere at LA Opera this November 2025. With Snider’s “rapturous” music (The New York Times), stage direction by Elkhanah Pulitzer (known for what The Guardian has called her “handsome and efficient” staging), and projection design by Deborah Johnson, Hildegard is sure to be a vivid sonic and visual experience.

New Productions

Angel’s Bone, Du Yun/Royce Vavrek 

In May 2026, English National Opera gives the UK premiere of Angel’s Bone in a new production in collaboration with Factory International and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. This Pulitzer Prize-winning opera by Du Yun and Royce Vavrek is a “disturbing, powerful and original” (The Washington Post) investigation of human trafficking through a parable of two angels returning to earth.  

Apartment House 1776, John Cage 

Commissioned by six American orchestras in celebration of the American bicentennial in 1976, John Cage’s Apartment House 1776 is ripe for re-discovery as the U.S. celebrates its 250th year as an independent nation. Cage conceived of the work as a “musicircus,” or a sonic event in which a range different musical performances simultaneously unfold—in this case, music drawn from 18th-century hymnals, a drum method book, selections from four religious traditions freely chosen by singers from those traditions, and more. Yuval Sharon’s new production of Apartment House opens at Detroit Opera in May 2026, following the success of their recent acclaimed production of Cage’s Europeras 3 & 4.

Down in the Valley, Kurt Weill/Arnold Sundgaard 

Weill and Sundgaard’s Down in the Valley is a “folk opera in one act” that was originally written for radio in 1945. Fittingly, the opera scaffolds its narrative on a number of famous American tunes (including the titular “Down in the Valley”) to create a touching love story set in Appalachia. Detroit Opera premieres a new production by Kaneza Schaal in December 2025. 

El último sueño de Frida y Diego, Gabriela Lena Frank/Nilo Cruz

El último sueño de Frida y Diego is a “magical-realist portrait of Mexico’s painterly power couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.” Written to a Spanish libretto by Frank’s long-time collaborator (and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright) Nilo Cruz, El último sueño inverts the Orfeo myth, with Kahlo returning from the underworld to aid Rivera as his own life concludes. Commissioned by San Diego Opera, San Francisco Opera, Fort Worth Opera, and DePauw University, the work is quickly becoming a contemporary classic, with recent performances at LA Opera and Opera Omaha following on the premiere runs by San Francisco and San Diego. Frank’s “confident, richly imagined score” (The New Yorker) now comes to Lyric Opera of Chicago in March-April 2026 and makes its debut at The Metropolitan Opera in a new production two months later. At The Met, Isabel Leonard, Carlos Álvarez, and Gabriella Reyes will perform under the batons of Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Steven Osgood in a production by Deborah Colker.

Innocence, Kaija Saariaho/Sofi Oksanen (with multilingual libretto by Aleksi Barrière)

Kaija Saariaho’s final opera is “a monumental achievement” that “shows how essential opera can be” (The Guardian). Set in the early 2000s in Helsinki, Innocence deals with the aftermath of a shooting at an international school. Each of the school students speaks and/or sings in their own language, with especially moving lines delivered by the murdered Markéta, cast as a folk singer performing in Czech. The Times Literary Supplement writes that “Saariaho and Oksanen have a masterpiece on their hands […] the psychology and phenomenology of the opera feel so acutely contemporary that the listener becomes inexorably drawn into and implicated in the world of the tragedy.” Jointly commissioned by the Festival International d’Art Lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence, Dutch National Opera, Finnish National Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and San Francisco Opera, Innocence had its US premiere in San Francisco in June 2024 and debuts at The Metropolitan Opera in April 2026. With Simon Stone directing, long-time Saariaho advocate Susanna Mälkki on the podium, and a star-studded cast including Joyce DiDonato, New York audiences can look forward to a brilliant presentation of this moving work.

The Ghosts of Versailles, John Corigliano/William M. Hoffman (based on Beaumarchais’ “La Mère coupable”) 

Corigliano and Hoffman’s landmark opera The Ghosts of Versailles is a “most American treatment of the Old World” (Classical Voice North America), presenting a contemporary opera buffa centered on familiar figures from both the court of Louis XVI and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. A new production by Sebastian Ritschel premieres under the baton of Stefan Veselka at Theatre Regensburg in September 2025, offering European audiences a chance to experience this “comic and serious, entertaining and erudite, silly and thoughtful” opera (Los Angeles Times). 

The Handmaid’s Tale, Poul Ruders/Paul Bentley (based on the novel by Margaret Atwood) 

Following on the success of a 2024 run with San Francisco Opera that San Francisco Classical Voice called “harrowing” and “must-see,” Ruders’ and Bentley’s dramatic adaption of Atwood’s chilling work of speculative fiction comes to Detroit Opera in March 2026 under the baton of Marit Strindlund. The work is also now available in a new, reduced orchestration, which premieres at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in July 2026 in a new production with stage direction by Brenna Corner and musical direction by Kamna Gupta.  

Sneak Peeks: 2026-27  

Mary, Queen of Scots, Thea Musgrave

Mary, Queen of Scots premiered in 1977, but its tale of a strong and astute queen challenged by the political intrigue, restrictive social norms, and treachery swirling around her is as relevant as ever. Indeed, English National Opera and San Francisco Opera’s new co-production makes this relevance explicit through a modern re-telling of the narrative which “reimagines the piece in terms of 20th-century sectarianism” (The Guardian). ENO’s February 2025 performances were “sung and acted with blazing conviction,” and San Francisco audiences can look forward to a similarly electric experience when the co-production of Musgrave’s “thrilling score […] rooted in the rough-hewn, elemental Scotland of Elizabethan times” comes stateside in 2026-27.