Opera InSight 2026: Santa Fe Opera’s Festival Season Symposium

Opera InSight offers an illuminating look at each season’s productions, with special focus on directors’ choices and musical interpretation. By highlighting the psychological themes of the narrative and focusing on this season’s productions, we reveal how opera makes a compelling mirror of the human condition — its foibles and triumphs, loves and vendettas, dilemmas and humor. Jamie and Olga perform Selected excerpts from the operas.

For the first time, Opera InSight includes live performances. This season includes Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, two timeless tragedies of love found and lost; Mozart’s The Magic Flute, with its lush music and trials of the heart; Handel’s 1725 Rodelinda, a melodrama of passion and intrigue that rivals modern film noir; and the American premiere of Tobias Picker’s Lili Elbe, a moving portrayal of a transgender protagonist’s transition.

Whether you are new to opera or a longtime patron seeking fresh insight, Opera InSight provides an engaging welcome and a deeper appreciation of these works. Which operas will inspire you this season? Opera InSight can help launch your journey.