After a minimal year, Long Beach Opera is back with its busiest calendar ever

Over the course of three sparsely programmed seasons during which four scheduled shows were cancelled, Long Beach Opera needed a reset. “We just need to take a bit of a breather to rebuild some of our production practices and infrastructure to be able to produce at a greater scale,” new CEO Michelle Magaldi said at the time.

Judging by their plans for 2026–27, the reset is complete and the restart in full effect. Seven different shows are on the calendar — the most they’ve ever done. And with five taking place on the Queen Mary and a sixth at First Congregational Church, the city’s historic landmarks have never been more central to LBO’s programming.

“As we start to talk about this season, we’re finding that people are really excited to come to the Queen Mary for the shows — it’s obviously one of the city’s most iconic destinations,” says Magaldi, noting that last year’s The Library of Maps is the only time LBO has performed there. “[…] We’ve been scattered all over Southern California in the previous few seasons, so we’re delighted to be able to present so many shows in Long Beach for this upcoming season.”

The season opens aboard the Queen Mary on September 26 with three works by Georges Aperghis: Le corps à corps, “a schizophrenic melodrama in which the percussionist recounts the events of an intense race”; Les Sept crimes de l’amour, “a theatrical chamber music piece composed for a soprano, a clarinetist, and a percussionist” that “merges music, physical movement, and staging into a unified performance […] creat[ing] unconventional sounds”; and Récitations, a solo work that stretches the performer’s voice […] into fertile extended technique territory, mixing sensuality with virtuosity.” 

On January 26, LBO will present soprano Amanda Forsythe, viola da gamba virtuoso Cristiano Contadin, and renowned ensemble Opera Prima performing “a program of music exploring the Galant style that was in vogue during the middle of the 18th century” at First Congregational Church of Long Beach. A stylistic cousin to this show comes in May (again on the Queen Mary) with a performance of Handel’s Tolomeo that is a co-production between LBO and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. These two shows mark the first time LBO has gone back to the Baroque since James Darrah Black took over as artistic director in early 2021.

“James has always been a Handel obsessive — I think even he’d say that — and has directed many Handel operas throughout his career at all different sorts of institutions,” Magaldi relates.  “That’s what led us to Tolomeo: independent of LBO, he was hired by Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra to direct this piece for their performances in the Bay Area and New York, which led to our partnering with them to create this co-production with James as director.”

Just four days after the Forsythe + Opera Prima performance, soprano Anna Schubert, whose several LBO performances include the magical world premiere of Kate Soper’s The Romance of the Rose, will deliver a solo recital (program TBA). In April, LBO will perform an intimate, abridged version of Pelléas et Mélisande, “distill[ing] the essence of Debussy’s only opera into a luminous, dreamlike journey through secrecy, longing, and fate.” In June comes Ana Sokolović’s Svadba (Serbian: “wedding”), a short 2011 opera for a cappella voices, with music “derived from traditional folklore, informed by everyday images and objects such as hair, cups, and water, [and] scenes unfold[ing] not in a linear narrative, but in a playful interconnection animated through drama; distilling magic and fantasy from ordinary moments.”

LBO will close 2026–27 on May 16 with a free workshop performance of The Passion of Nell, an opera composed by LBO Studio Artist Shelley Washington, with a libretto by Lisa Teasley, that “tells the true story of Nell Theobald, a model whose obsession with soprano Birgit Nilsson ended in tragedy.” Performed at UCLA’s Little Theater, this will be the season’s sole foray outside of Long Beach — but Magaldi says the plan is for LBO to world premiere the complete production sometime in 2028. 

Although they didn’t officially count it as part of their season, last month LBO staged several performances of the free, half-hour, eco-conscious mini-opera Aquaprofunda at Aquarium of the Pacific, a return engagement after its American premiere there in July 2025. Magaldi says LBO hopes to make Aquaprofunda at the Aquarium an annual event, noting how well it fits in with LBO’s aim to produce new, “site-specific or site-responsive works” in the city they call home.

“Through the last year we’ve been working to define what Long Beach Opera is, has been, and will be in the future,” she shares. “Part of what we’re thinking about for the future is that we continue to have a regular series of events in Long Beach [to help build] deeper and more consistent connections within the community.”

For additional info, tickets, etc., visit longbeachopera.org/2026-2027.