Mozart's IDOMENEO Begins At The War Memorial Opera House In June

San Francisco Opera will present Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Idomeneo from June 14–25 as part of its 2025 Summer Season at the War Memorial Opera House. Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim leads these performances of the composer's early masterpiece, which premiered in 1781 when Mozart was just 25, in a new-to-San Francisco Opera staging by Australian director Lindy Hume. Company Chorus Director John Keene prepares the artists of the San Francisco Opera Chorus for the opera's choral scenes.

Mozart's Idomeneo takes place in the aftermath of the Trojan War when a fateful oath to the gods by a shipwrecked king precipitates an impossible choice between duty to his kingdom and love for his own son. Predating Mozart's famed collaborations with Italian poet Lorenzo Da Ponte (Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte) and his final masterwork for the stage, The Magic Flute, Idomeneo marks a turning point for the composer where the one-time child prodigy had emerged as an artist of singular originality and brilliance.

Music Director Eun Sun Kim, whose initiative to lead major works by Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner each season continued last fall with Un Ballo in Maschera and Tristan und Isolde, will for the second time add an opera by Mozart to her San Francisco Opera performances. During the 2024 Summer Season, she conducted The Magic Flute with “the supportive grace we've come to expect from her” (San Francisco Chronicle). These performances of Idomeneo will be her first.

Lindy Hume makes her Company debut directing her production which was first staged by Opera Australia in Melbourne in 2023. The dramatic tensions onstage are enhanced by imagery of the surging seas and craggy coastlines of Tasmania from projection designer David Bergman and cinematographer Catherine Pettman of Sheoak Films. The presentation also features scenery originally designed by Michael Yeargan with additional set design consulting by Richard Roberts and the work of Costume Designer Anna Cordingley and original lighting designer Verity Hampson, which will be revived by Justin A. Partier.

American tenor Matthew Polenzani stars as Idomeneo, a role for which he has won widespread acclaim on many of opera's leading stages. The New York Times said of Polenzani's portrayal of the Cretan king: “Some tenors singing Idomeneo emphasize the heroic cast of the music. But the role also demands classic Mozartean refinement. Mr. Polenzani combines both qualities in his poignant, gripping performance, singing with melting warmth one moment, virile heft the next.”

Daniela Mack, who portrayed Frida Kahlo in Gabriela Lena Frank and Nilo Cruz's El último sueño de Frida y Diego and Rosmira in Handel's Partenope in recent seasons with San Francisco Opera, returns as Idamante, the role she first sang here as an Adler Fellow in 2008. The mezzo-soprano's journey of discovery and reconnection with her Argentinean roots is the subject of In Song: Daniela Mack, an episode of San Francisco Opera's free, video portrait series which was shot on location in Buenos Aires.

“Indispensable in Mozart” declared the New York Times about Ying Fang. The Chinese soprano makes her house debut as the captured Trojan princess, Ilia. Fang's performances, especially in the operas of Mozart, have won considerable praise at the Metropolitan Opera, London's Royal Opera, Munich's Bavarian State Opera, the Paris Opéra and Vienna State Opera.

Renowned as one of today's leading dramatic sopranos, Elza van den Heever returns to the War Memorial Opera House stage where she began as a young artist with the Merola Opera Program and as an Adler Fellow. She takes on the Greek princess who loves Idamante, Elettra, a role that helped propel her career to stardom. Van den Heever's previous triumphs with San Francisco Opera include Donna Anna in Don Giovanni while still an Adler Fellow and Leonore in a new production of Beethoven's Fidelio during the Company's 2021 return from the pandemic shutdown where “her lustrous soprano rang out in gorgeously ascendant arches” (San Francisco Classical Voice).

Tenor Alek Shrader, who recently appeared with the Company as Emilio in Partenope alongside his wife, Daniela Mack as Rosmira, reprises Arbace, the role he performed in 2008 while still an Adler Fellow. Shrader's roles with San Francisco Opera have included Nemorino in L'Elisir d'Amore, Tamino in The Magic Flute, Count Almaviva in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and David in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

The cast includes bass-baritone and third-year Adler Fellow Jongwon Han as the Voice of the Oracle and a quartet of Adler Fellows making house debuts: sopranos Georgiana Adams and Mary Hoskins (Cretan Women), tenor Samuel White (High Priest of Neptune and Trojan Man) and Olivier Zerouali (Trojan Man).

Following its American premiere in 1947 at the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood, Idomeneo first arrived at San Francisco Opera in 1977. The production by visionary director/designer Jean-Pierre Ponnelle was conducted by John Pritchard, a long-time Idomeneo champion who helped secure the opera's place in the repertoire. The cast was headed by Eric Tappy as Idomeneo, Maria Ewing as Idamante, Christiane Eda-Pierre as Ilia, Carol Neblett as Elettra and George Shirley as the High Priest. In 1989, Maestro Pritchard, then San Francisco Opera's first Music Director, led the Company's new production by director John Copley which starred Wieslaw Ochman in the title role, Karita Mattila as Ilia and Hans Peter Blockwitz as Idamante for the Company's only presentation of Mozart's revised version with the King's son rewritten for tenor. On October 17, 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake caused the Idomeneo performance scheduled for that evening to be canceled. Within three days, the Company was presenting semi-staged presentations of Verdi's Otello and Aida along with Idomeneo at the Masonic Auditorium while the safety of the Opera House was secured. Donald Runnicles, the Company's second Music Director, led revivals of the Copley production in 1999 and 2008.

This season's five performances of Idomeneo will be sung in Italian with English supertitles and are scheduled for June 14 (7:30 p.m.), 17 (7:30 p.m.), 20 (7:30 p.m.), 22 (2 p.m.) and 25 (7:30 p.m.).

LIVESTREAM on June 20 at 7:30 p.m. Pacific

The third performances of Idomeneo on Friday, June 20 at 7:30 p.m. Pacific will be livestreamed to viewers in the United States and Europe. Tickets, which include a 48-hour on-demand viewing period beginning June 23 at 10 a.m. Pacific, are $27.50. For tickets and more information, visit sfopera.com/digital/livestream.

Following the Sunday, June 22 matinee of Idomeneo, Eun Sun Kim will gather with audience members in the auditorium for a post-performance talkback. Ticketholders are invited to attend this live Q&A with San Francisco Opera's Music Director to learn about the behind-the-scenes work that goes into producing opera.

Tickets for Idomeneo range from $28–$438 and are available at the San Francisco Opera Box Office (301 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco), by calling (415) 864-3330 and online at sfopera.com. San Francisco Opera Box Office hours are Monday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.–6 p.m. (Saturdays phone only). A $2 per-ticket facility fee is included in Balcony 1, 2 and 3 zone prices; all other zones include a $3 per-ticket facility fee.

Tickets for the June 20 livestream are $27.50 each. For more information, visit sfopera.com/digital/livestream.

The War Memorial Opera House is located at 301 Van Ness Avenue. Patrons are encouraged to use public transportation to attend San Francisco Opera performances. The War Memorial Opera House is within walking distance of the Civic Center BART/Muni Station and near numerous bus lines, including 5, 21, 49 and F Market Street. For further public transportation information, visit bart.gov and sfmta.com.

Gifts of all sizes help create San Francisco Opera's programs and are appreciated. To donate visit sfopera.com/donate.

Pre-opera talks take place 55 minutes prior to every performance. The 20-minute overview of Idomeneo is presented by Laura Pritchard.

To post a comment, you must register and login.