Chicago Opera Theater has unveiled its 2024-25 season.

The season opens with Ferdinando Paër, Giuseppe Maria Foppa, and Giacomo Cinti’s “Leonora.” The opera, which premiered in 1804, will get its North American premiere and tells another version of the same story that Beethoven adapted for his famed “Fidelio.” The work stars Edgardo Rocha, Vanessa Becerra, Ian Koziara, Kameron Alston, Keely Futtere, and Joo Won Kang. Lawrence Edelson directs and Dame Jane Glover conducts.

Performance Dates: Oct. 1 – 6, 2024

Then comes “Bohème and Beyond: The Legacy of Puccini,” a concert that explores the works of the iconic composer. The performance also includes music by composers influenced by the Italian, including Franz Lehár, Leoš Janacek, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Gian Carlo Menotti, Daniel Catán, Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Jonathan Larson.

Performance Date: Dec. 7, 2024

The company will present the concert premiere of “Remedios Varios Para las Aflicciones del Cuerpo y el Espíritu,” the sixth full-length commission through the company’s Vanguard Initiative. The work is created by Carlos R. Carrillo and Stephanie Fleischmann.

“Set in a world devoid of color and inspired by the imagery of surrealist painter Remedios Varo, a lone tree holds within its rings the memory and possibility of music, poetry, and art. An herbalist struggles to heal a community afflicted by a siege of maladies, and a homesick boarding-school student dreams of escape. An ancient medicinal, written in Spanish (one of countless forbidden languages), just may hold the key — to transcendence, or complete obliteration. This searing new opera looks at a culture rapidly strip-mining itself of its riches and embraces the realm of the imagination as fertile ground for regeneration,” reads the official synopsis of the work.

Performance Date: April 5, 2025

Closing out the season is the world premiere of “She Who Dared” by Jasmine Arielle Barnes and Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton. The work was commissioned by American Lyric Theater and is teh first opera to be professionally produced in the U.S. that has been written by two Black female artists.

“Everyone has heard of Rosa Parks, but she wasn’t the first to refuse to move. She Who Dared recenters the spotlight on the courageous women who helped desegregate the Montgomery bus system in the 1950’s leading to the momentous court case of Browder v. Gayle,” notes the official description of the opera.

The work will star Jasmine Habersham, Jacqueline Echols, Lindsey Reynolds, Chrystal E. Willams, Jazmine Olwalia, Cierra Byrd, and Leah Dexter. Michael Ellis Ingram conducts and Timothy Douglas directs.

Performance Date: June 3 – 8, 2025