Opera Parallèle, San Francisco’s small but mighty champion of contemporary opera, is continuing its musical crusade for the 16th year.
The company’s 2025–2026 season will feature three “bold productions” that represent a continued “commitment to innovative storytelling and community engagement,” according to an official press release.
The season will see the world premiere of Hello, Star by composer Carla Lucero and librettist Jarrod Lee, an encore presentation of Philip Glass’s La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast), and the first Bay Area performances of Doubt by composer Douglas J. Cuomo (based on librettist John Patrick Shanley’s play of the same name).
Hello, Star, commissioned through the company’s Hands-on-Opera community engagement program, is intended as a “family-friendly opera that celebrates curiosity and the contributions of Black women to science.” The work will be created during OP’s upcoming residency at 836M in North Beach — a process in collaboration with the University of San Francisco Chorus, with L. Peter Callender on board to stage-direct.
General and Artistic Director Nicole Paiement says, “We love the Hands-on-Opera project, as it brings active community members into the ‘making’ of opera. They engage as participants rather than observers, which is another entry way to opera and a positive way to work on developing new audiences for the future.
“We are thrilled to be working with students from USF, which does not have a program in opera. Their choral conductor, Rebecca Seeman, will be the associate conductor for this project and conduct one of the performances.”
Starting the season, Hello, Star is scheduled for Oct. 25–26 at the Creativity Theater at the Children’s Creativity Museum
Creative Director Brian Staufenbiel is the artistic force behind La Belle et la Bête, which OP is reprising in a staging that the company first presented in 2022.
Staufenbiel recalls how he reacted when Glass reached out about the possibility of a new production. “We were inspired to let our imaginations run wild,” he says, “which is only fitting when you consider that the source material was created by Glass and the iconic poet, playwright, novelist, designer, and film director Jean Cocteau.
“Here was a chance — finally! — for OP to finish [presenting] Glass’s fantastical Cocteau trilogy,” Staufenbiel remembers thinking, referencing the composer’s other two operas inspired by the French director’s films, which the company had staged in previous seasons.
Back to La Belle et la Bête. “My production concept integrates three elements: Cocteau’s 1946 film, OP’s version of the film with our singers, and the singers live onstage,” Staufenbiel says. “The result is a surreal dreamscape of an opera that fuses live performance and cinema.”
Presented in collaboration with Cal Performances, La Belle et la Bête is scheduled for March 13 and 14, 2026, at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall.
Before becoming an opera, Doubt, which tells a story of faith, morality, and uncertainty within a Catholic school, was a Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning hit — adapted first, in 2008, into an Oscar-nominated film starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Viola Davis.
“Both Brian and I know Doug Cuomo very well,” says Paiement, “and have had interest in reworking his opera Doubt, which had a great success in [its 2013] premiere at Minnesota Opera.
“One of our missions is to work on reorchestration and at times [adapt contemporary operas] so that they can be accessible to smaller venues and companies. It brings intimacy to the pieces and also can provide a new life for the work.”
Presented in collaboration with the Presidio Theatre, Doubt is scheduled for May 29–31, 2026.
Paiement says that OP doesn’t choose a season lightly. “It requires a great deal of work as we meet every week to discuss artistic planning. We have a criteria list that helps us choose works that relate to both our mission and goals.
“Our considerations include loving the work and the quality of the work, [the style of the music], the relevance of the storytelling, the potential for expanded collaboration, inclusivity, [bigger] audiences, diversity.
“We also want to advance the canon through reorchestration and consider such practical matters as feasibility and venue.”
Like all opera companies, regardless of size and repertory, OP plans far into the future.
“We are working right now on 2026–2027 and 2027–2028,” Paiement says. “We of course have contingency plans as things change. We are experiencing some challenging times in the arts right now, but the choice of the repertoire does not necessarily change. It is more the ‘how’ something will be done that needs to be addressed.”
Currently, OP is presenting the West Coast premiere of Harvey Milk Reimagined in a new production created by Staufenbiel and conducted by Paiement. Performances run through June 7 at the Blue Shield of California Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
