Cincinnati Opera will present its 2026 Summer Festival at Music Hall from June 18 through August 2, marking the company’s 106th anniversary season. The festival includes five productions—two full-scale operas, a chamber opera, a world premiere commissioned work, and two cabaret-style programs—along with the launch of the Black Opera Project, a three-opera commissioning initiative developed by the company to celebrate the Black American experience.

The festival opens with Richard Strauss’s Salome on June 18 and 20, with soprano Kathryn Lewek in her role debut alongside bass-baritone Alfred Walker, conducted by Robert Spano leading the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. It is the work’s first staging at Music Hall in more than 25 years. The world premiere of Lalovavi follows on July 9 and 11, an Afrofuturist opera composed by Kevin Day with a libretto by Tifara Brown. Set 400 years in the future, the work stars soprano Brittany Olivia Logan and Grammy Award-winning bass Morris Robinson, and serves as the inaugural production of the Black Opera Project.

Georges Bizet’s Carmen closes the main stage season July 25 through August 2 in a new-to-Cincinnati production set in 1950s Havana, featuring mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges as the title role and conducted by Ramón Tebar. The company will also present the Cincinnati premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon’s chamber opera Orpheus and Euridice in the intimate Wilks Studio, alongside two artist-curated Studio Sessions on June 25 and July 1. Season subscription packages start at $60; individual tickets begin at $21.

Source: Cincinnati Opera