For the first time in more than 30 years, Houston Grand Opera will present Porgy and Bess as part of its 2025-26 season themed “The Light We Hold,” one that will also celebrate the final season of Artistic and Music Director Patrick Summers after 26 years.
HGO also will present Puccini’s trio of one-act operas, Il trittico as well as a classic favorite The Barber of Seville. A revised version of Kevin Puts’ Silent Night, Hansel and Gretel and the American premier of director Robert Wilson’s Messiah will also be part of the season. A special add on will be Carlyle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men which will be presented in the smaller Cullen theater on March 13 and 15, 2026. HGO’s Butler Studio artists will sing the roles.
Summers along with HGO General Director and CEO Khori Dastoor made the announcement at a reception this week for press and donors. Bass-baritone Ryan McKinny (Il trittico) and Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke (Hansel and Gretel) were also in attendance as was director Francesca Zambello, who will be doing Porgy and Bess.
HGO first presented Porgy and Bess 50 years ago in a production that went on to Broadway and earned a Tony and a Grammy for HGO. Dastoor called it “the most American opera I can think of.”
Speaking about Puccini’s three part Tritico, Summers said he considers it the composer’s masterpiece. “The range and ambition, wealth of melody and the profound sense of drama that are in these three operas there’s really nothing else like it. The opera was his response to the First World War. He could not conceive of the level of devastation that he was seeing. all around him. All three of the operas, though they are of very, very different styles, all three of the operas are about the effect of one death on those left alive.”
The 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning 2011 opera Silent Night, inspired by the 2005 movie Joyeux Noël, is concerned with the Christmas truce of 1914, Dastoor said. A soldier singing into the trenches led to both sides’ refusal to fight for one night. After its production here it will go onto the Met in New York City.
Calling upon herself to come up with one word for Hansel and Gretel and laughing as she did so, Dastoor said “expensive.” Coming straight from the stages of Covent Garden, the opera will have both a student matinee and a Family Day, The Family Day is described as being relaxed with lobby activities for kids. Sasha Cooke will direct.
Summers, conceding that not everyone would call Messiah an opera since it does not have a narrative, said the new Robert Wilson production has created a moving piece of abstract art. Messiah will be the final production for Summers as HGO conductor, one he welcomes since it combines the work of two of his favorite composers: Handel’s composition with an arrangement by Mozart.
There will be a moment in it where an astronaut comes on stage and starts twirling and dancing which at first seems to be absurd but becomes poignantly meaningful, Summers said.
The company’s touring Opera to Go! program will travel to schools and community centers throughout the Houston area from March through May of 2026 to present The Velveteen Rabbit.
And in winter 2026, HGO will present its seventh annual Giving Voice, highlighting Black artists in opera and song.
Single tickets to select performances (November 9, 11, 13, 15) of Porgy and Bess are available now, with tickets to Family Day (February 14) available starting July 1 and tickets to all mainstage performances released later this summer.
The 2025-26 HGO Season:
The Gershwins®: Porgy and Bess®
By George Gershwin, DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, and Ira Gershwin
Performance dates: October 24, 26m, November 1, 5, 7, 9m, 11, 13, 15, 2025
Sung in English with projected English text
Puccini: Il trittico
Performance dates: October 30, November 2m, 8, 12, 14, 2025
Sung in Italian with projected English translation
Puts and Campbell: Silent Night
Music by Kevin Puts
Libretto by Mark Campbell
Performance dates: January 23, 25m, 31, February 4, 8m, 2026
Sung in English, French, and German, with projected English text/translation
Humperdinck: Hansel and Gretel
Performance dates: January 30, February 1m, 7, 12m (Student Matinee) #, 13, 14m (Family Day) #, 15m, 2026
Sung in German with projected English translation. Student Matinee and Family Day performances will be sung in English with an alternate cast (#).
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
