With some major new operas already on the boards this year, including works by Rebecca Saunders, Unsuk Chin and Jennifer Walshe, it would seem that contemporary opera is as strong as ever. And while there has been a steady stream of new commissions, it has been rare to see a new opera added to the frequently performed repertory since the operatic canon solidified in the early 20th century.
As well as mentioning several new stage works soon to head to venues around the world, this feature includes several that are regional premieres and second productions, crucial if contemporary pieces are to enter the repertory, and for the health of opera more generally.
Bushra El-Turk: Oum – A Son’s Quest for His Mother
Bushra El-Turk’s recent Woman at Point Zero was much acclaimed in its performances at Covent Garden and at Aix-en-Provence, winning an Ivor Novello award in 2024. Her latest stage work Oum was presented first at Opera Forward Festival earlier in the year, and this UK premiere performance at the Barbican this October includes many of the same performers, including Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra. The opera is inspired by famed Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum (1904–1975), renowned throughout the Middle East. With a libretto based on writings by Lebanese author and playwright Wajdi Mouawad, El-Turk’s work itself is both experimental and lyrical, following a young boy Wahab as he makes a journey to visit his dying mother in hospital.
Sarah Kirkland Snider: Hildegard
Sarah Kirkland Snider is one of a leading group of contemporary US composers who often make use of the voice and vocal ensembles and sometimes reference medieval and Early music. Her most recent record release, on Nonesuch and New Amsterdam, was an unusual almost-operatic dramatic song cycle, a five-composer collaboration with Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova and Caroline Shaw. Snider’s new opera Hildegard is a dramatisation of Hildegard von Bingen’s visionary world and her intimate relationship with her secretary and confidant Richardis von Stade, whom she “cherished with divine love”. It is presented at LA Opera this November.
Francisco Coll: Enemigo del pueblo
This new opera by leading Spanish composer Francisco Coll is based on Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People, concerning a doctor, appointed to a small spa town, who is faced with trying to convince the population that their baths have been contaminated: as the mayor flounders, the town responds with undiluted wrath. (The play would later influence Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.) Coll’s first evening-length stage work for orchestral forces, this political opera is the first commissioned by the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia, Coll’s home town. Premiered in November, the composer conducts, with later performances at Madrid’s Teatro Real in February.
Britta Byström: Eatnama váibmu
Swedish composer Britta Byström’s evocative music would seem to be the ideal match for this new departure by the Royal Swedish Opera this November – the first opera in the Northern Sámi language. Titled Eatnama váibmu, or The Heart of the Earth, this fairy-tale opera depicts the Sámi creation myth: a struggle between good and evil, as the god Ipmil creates the sun, the moon, human beings, reindeer, and all the rest of nature, with later creations soon coming into conflict with each other. Directed by Sámi film director and composer Elle-Márjá Eira, this is a piece for all ages, embedded in the natural and mythological landscapes of Fennoscandia.
Julia Mihály: Der Brand
Frankfurt-based experimental composer Julia Mihály is well-versed in music theatre, having presented a slew of works with her theatre ‘band’ Lower Complaints Department. These strange and politically-charged pieces, dubbed ‘Empirical Music Theatre’ have appeared, among other places, at Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Wien Modern and Frankfurt’s Theater Landungsbrücken, often spilling outside the theatre space and into the public realm. Mihály’s latest collaboration, this time with German playwright Sina Ahlers, appears at Staatstheater Kassel this December. Der Brand (The Fire) takes as its subject the artificial borders drawn between people everywhere – expect everything ordinary to turn upside down.
Matthias Pintscher: Das kalte Herz
Conductor Matthias Pintscher will be a familiar figure to modern music watchers in Paris, as the music director of Ensemble Intercontemporain (until 2023) and frequent figure at Lucerne Festival too. He’s a leading composer as well, and this new opera appears at Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden in January and shortly after at Paris’ Opéra Comique in March. Loosely based on Wilhelm Hauff’s Romantic fairy tale Das kalte Herz (The Cold Heart), the setting is the Black Forest. Protagonist Peter encounters a forest spirit, the glass-imp, who grants three wishes to every person born on a Sunday between 11am and 2pm. Things get stranger from there.
Dai Fujikura: The Great Wave
London-based Japanese composer Dai Fujikura has been one of the most interesting voices in contemporary opera for over a decade (Bachtrack spoke to him back in 2020 about his then most recent opera, A Dream of Armageddon, adapted from HG Wells). In February, his latest stage work, The Great Wave, is presented by Scottish Opera. With a libretto by longtime collaborator Harry Ross and a production led by acclaimed director Satoshi Miyagi, the piece is inspired by Hokusai’s famous print from his Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, and dramatises the printmaker’s artistic struggles and his relationship with daughter Ōi.
Gerald Barry: Salome
Irish composer Gerald Barry has been one of the most bold and inventive composers of new opera since the 1980s. His opera Salome is his seventh and the second to be based on writings of Oscar Wilde. Begun in 2017 and completed in 2020, the staged production was delayed (due predictably to Covid) – the world premiere was given at Theater Magdeburg earlier this year. US audiences can hear it conducted by longtime Barry champion Thomas Adès, with the LA Philharmonic in March. With much of the Magdeburg cast returning, it is a chance to hear the latest from one of the world’s most iconoclastic and individual composers of music theatre.
Munich Biennale: May 2026
A difficult one to summarise, as it’s not been fully announced, but the Munich Biennale – or ‘Münchener Biennale Festival für Neues Musiktheater’ to give its full name – makes a return in 2026. Renowned as a leading event in contemporary opera, this 20th edition of the festival also celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founder, Hans Werner Henze. With eight to ten new stage works presented as co-productions with theatres across Munich, it is the probably the most ambitious display of contemporary music theatre anywhere in the world. Expect further announcements soon.
Olga Neuwirth: Orlando
Sticking with Germany, Berlin’s Komische Oper in May sees a rare second production of a contemporary opera: Olga Neuwirth’s Orlando. Premiered in Vienna in 2019, this will be the opera’s first airing in Germany, with a new director and creative team, new cast and new music director. Ema Nikolovska stars as Woolf’s famous androgynous aristocratic protagonist Orlando, with Neuwirth’s complex score rich in quotations, allusions and electronic manipulations. The central character lives through centuries, switches genders, encounters seemingly hundreds of people, eventually approaching the present in all its chaotic convolutions. If the Vienna production is anything to go by, expect the spectacular.
John Tavener: Krishna
Speaking of traversing the centuries, in 2026 we have the long-awaited premiere of British composer John Tavener’s Krishna, his final work, depicting the eons-long life of the Hindu god. Completed in manuscript form in 2005, it depicts Krishna’s birth and life in 15 vignettes – from his birth when a cow settles to Earth weeping, to when his mother prises open his mouth only to see all of heaven and the universe within. Famous for his visionary theatrical works, including The Protecting Veil and The Lamb, Tavener was a kind of latter-day William Blake, experiencing immense popularity despite (or perhaps because of) his work’s spiritual depth and mysticism. Krishna will be directed by Sir David Pountney and presented at Grange Park Opera in June 2026.
