For its 2025 season, Chautauqua Opera continues its 95-year history of producing opera at Chautauqua Institution while also strengthening its commitment to developing new opera. Alongside a production of Puccini’s La bohème in Chautauqua’s Amphitheater, the company will conduct workshops of three new operas. Ranging from chamber operas to large-scale pieces, these workshops will feature Chautauqua Opera Company’s 16 Young Artists collaborating with celebrated composers and librettists. Chautauqua audiences will have the exclusive opportunity to experience these new operas in their developmental stages.
The first two weeks of the 2025 season are dedicated to an orchestral workshop of Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Lincoln in the Bardo, based on George Saunders’ Booker Prize-winning novel, and commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. The workshop will involve 85 musicians, marshalling the combined forces of the Chautauqua Opera Company, Opera Conservatory and Symphony Orchestra, and featuring the internationally renowned soprano Christine Goerke. A public presentation of 60 minutes of the opera, followed by a conversation with the creators will take place in Norton Hall. While in rehearsals and production for La bohème, Chautauqua Opera Company will also workshop two chamber operas: Ida by Lamplight, a new work by Jeremy Gill and Jerre Dye, and Sitcom, a neo-baroque comic opera by Luke Styles and Alan McKendrick. Both will receive public presentations with piano and harpsichord accompaniment to close the season. La bohème and all three workshops will be conducted by general and artistic director Steven Osgood.
“The 2025 season represents a bold synthesis of old and new repertoire for Chautauqua Opera Company as we chart the future for our storied and historic company,” stated Osgood. “Bringing Puccini’s beloved La bohème to the Amphitheater is something I have dreamt of for years, and I am excited how Keturah Stickann’s adventurous approach allows our 16 Young Artists and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra tell this achingly beautiful story. I am exceedingly grateful for our partnership with the Chautauqua Opera Guild, whose continuing philanthropy is helping sustain opera production at Chautauqua. 2025 is also the first full summer of our New Opera Workshops, and it brings Chautauqua into conversation and collaboration with The Metropolitan Opera and Opera Philadelphia. I cannot wait to share Lincoln in the Bardo, Sitcom, and Ida by Lamplight with our community. The three operas could not be more different from each other and together they invite our company, artists and audience to be trailblazing participants in the future of opera.”
Composer: Jeremy Gill
Librettist: Jerry Dye
Ida by Lamplight is the third chamber opera to be realized from Jerre Dye’s anthology libretto The Summer Place, commissioned by the Chautauqua Opera Guild, which captures Chautauqua Institution’s history from its founding through today. Jeremy Gill, Chautauqua Opera Company’s 2016 composer-in-residence, will set the 20-minute score. Ida by Lamplight invites the audience into the office of The Chautauquan, late one night in 1886. Ida Tarbell, managing editor of The Chautauquan, and Kate Kimball, an early leader of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (CLSC) read and answer letters to the nascent CLSC as they survey the profound effect their work is having on thousands of readers across the United States. Commissioned by Chautauqua Opera Company to celebrate The 150th anniversary of Chautauquan Daily in 2026, Ida by Lamplight will be given a one-week workshop, capped by a public reading with piano accompaniment.
