Opera and Fort Worth Opera are shooting for early 2021.īut San Diego Opera is among a small group of companies experimenting this fall with outside-the-box live productions in outdoor stadiums and parking lots.

San Francisco Opera, Dallas Opera and Houston Grand Opera aim to reopen next spring. The Metropolitan Opera in New York won’t reopen until fall 2021. Since the pandemic struck in March, nearly all of the nation’s major opera companies have gone into hibernation. Cameras will capture the singers in close-ups that will be projected, along with supertitles, on large video screens nearby, and a special sound system will transmit the singers’ voices to the FM radios of the vehicles lined up for the show. Nationally known singers will perform a slimmed-down version of “La bohème” with costumes and sets on an elevated stage, alongside conductor Rafael Payare, San Diego Symphony’s music director, and 24 of the symphony’s musicians. On Saturday evening in the parking lot at Pechanga Arena, San Diego Opera will open its 2020-21 season with one of the nation’s first-ever drive-in opera productions. Now it’s returning for another major moment in the organization’s history: Its rebirth after a seven-month closure due to COVID-19. And it was the first opera the company produced after being saved from near-closure in 2014. It was the opera that introduced the newfound company to San Diego on May 5, 1965. Over the past 55 years, Giacomo Puccini’s beloved opera “La bohème” has helped San Diego Opera mark some historic milestones.

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