LA Opera announced their 40th season on Monday, concluding James Conlon’s 20-year run as music director. While the company boasts stagings of West Side Story, Falstaff and La bohème, the only main-stage world premiere planned for this season has been dropped.
Missy Mazzoli’s Lincoln in the Bardo was originally to debut in February 2026, but has now been cancelled altogether. Instead, the opera will have its first performance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in October 2026.
The opera, with libretto by Royce Vavrek, is adapted from George Saunders’ experimental 2017 novel, depicting President Lincoln’s son William Wallace after his death at age 11 – in a limbo-like space between death and rebirth. Mazzoli’s fifth opera, Lincoln in the Bardo was scheduled for London performances at English National Opera, which have also since been cancelled.
“With rising expenses, it’s harder for us to manage the manifestation of all of our potential dreams,” said Cristopher Koelsch, president of LA Opera. “It’s a wonderful project and I think it will be very impactful when it gets to the Met. What Missy and Royce have done in adapting something that is essentially unadaptable is really miraculous, a very beautiful and very moving piece.”
Another new commission, Mason Bates’ The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was to have premiered in LA last October, but has also been shifted to New York. The opera’s first performance with a non-student cast will open the Met’s 2025–26 season in September.
While LA Opera’s revenue is up in 2023–24, it has still not matched levels seen in 2021–22. The company will mount five main-stage productions at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion this season, down from six in the prior two seasons. In 2006–07, LA Opera mounted ten main productions.
This season’s West Side Story is a staging by Francesca Zambello, first seen at Houston Grand Opera in 2018, and The Magic Flute is a revival of Barrie Kosky’s 2012 Komische Oper production. Conlon also conducts Philip Glass’ Akhenaten in the same staging by Phelim McDermott that appeared at English National Opera in 2016.
Two world premieres will be given this season, but not on LA’s main stage: Hildegard, by Sarah Kirkland Snider, will premiere at The Wallis in Beverley Hills in November. Later, Carla Lucero’s The Tower of Babel, a community opera, will be conducted by Conlon at Our Lady of the Angels in May 2026.
Los Angeles is still reeling from the wildfires that tore through Pacific Palisades and Altadena earlier this year, killing 29. Many LA-based musicians and performers were significantly affected, with homes, studios and archives destroyed. The economic impact of the fires has been projected to exceed $50bn.
