PRODUCTIONS
2027 SEASON
Cape Town Opera’s 2027 season moves from Mozart to Verdi, and from the grand stage into communities across Cape Town.
At its heart are two very different operas united by a fascination with masks and manipulation: Verdi’s dark tragedy Rigoletto and Mozart’s playful Così fan tutte. The year also brings a Beethoven bicentenary Easter concert and O Holy Night with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, and Vienna in the Park at Maynardville. After sold-out houses, A Little Night Music returns by popular demand. Opera Blocks, Opera in Your Neighbourhood and Rigoletto – Opera for All welcome new audiences, and the new Stars of the Future concert spotlights the company’s rising talent. Internationally, our acclaimed Porgy and Bess travels to The Grange Festival in Hampshire.
A season that is alive, generous and full of possibility.
Join us for a year of opera – aloud! #OperAloud
Opera in Your Neighbourhood
Opera in Your Neighbourhood brings Cape Town Opera out into community halls across the city, providing both a perfect first taste for anyone new to opera, and a treat for those who have loved the art form for years. For anyone who has never heard operatic voices in the same room before, it is close to an ideal introduction: an hour of glorious singing, free of charge, at a range where you can see the performers breathe.
Duet Endowment Trust Gala Concert
There are few occasions on which Cape Town Opera and the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra appear together in full glory. The Duet Endowment Trust Gala is one of them: an event built to showcase both companies at their best, and one of the largest in the city’s classical calendar. The programme differs with each gala, but its character does not. Expect overtures that open the evening at full tilt, bel canto duets that have made careers, ensembles in which four or five voices weave separate lines into something no single voice could achieve, and arias audiences have loved for two centuries.
Vienna in The Park
Vienna has long been the historical heart of some of the world’s most beloved music, famed for its sweeping waltzes and the sparkling operetta masterpieces of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Vienna in the Park brings this rich tradition to life beneath the stars, featuring repertoire dedicated to the legendary composers of the era, from the definitive waltzes and Viennese operettas of Johann Strauss II to the romantic melodies of Franz Lehár.
Opera Blocks
Opera Blocks in Your Library is a magical performance made for the youngest possible audience: babies and toddlers aged 0-5, accompanied by the adults who bring them. It runs on a simple premise while the library transforms into something else entirely. Costumes, colour and lighting build a world for children to step into, and they experience live, close up singing in a range of styles, tempi and vocal colours, accompanied by keyboard. Everything is designed to accommodate the way small children absorb the magical world around them, so these little ones are invited to handle the costumes and props as they crawl, toddle, watch from a lap or lie flat on the floor or exactly where their mood takes them.
Beethoven Celebration
Each Easter, Cape Town Opera joins forces with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra at the Toringkerk in Paarl. The concert has become one of the fixed cultural highlights of the year, and the programme changes each season, drawn from the great sacred works by composers who wrote some of their most ambitious music for the church.
Rigoletto
Rigoletto, the hunchbacked jester at the Duke of Mantua’s corrupt court, mocks an old nobleman whose daughter the Duke has ruined, and is cursed for it. The curse finds Gilda, the daughter Rigoletto has hidden from the world. She has already fallen in love with the Duke, believing him to be a poor student. When the courtiers abduct her for him, Rigoletto hires an assassin to kill the Duke. Gilda, still naively in love, is killed instead of the Duke, and the curse results in a father holding his daughter’s lifeless body.
A Little Night Music
Some productions earn a return, and this one did. Cape Town Opera’s A Little Night Music sold out performances and sent audiences out telling everyone who had not yet been. Weekend Special called it ‘a multifaceted gem of music and theatre alike’. It comes back for those who missed it, and for a good number who want to see it again.
Porgy and Bess
Cape Town Opera has been performing Porgy and Bess for two decades, from the first collaboration with Norrlandsoperan in Sweden to performances with the Shanghai Symphony, and is now considered amongst the world’s leading interpreters of the piece. The 2026 European tour with London’s Chineke! Orchestra sold out house after house before a note was played in Paris, Lucerne, Berlin, Antwerp and Dortmund. In 2027 it travels to The Grange Festival in Hampshire.
Rigoletto - Opera for All
As part of Cape Town Opera’s Opera for All initiative, Verdi’s Rigoletto comes to the stage in an accessible, intimate format with piano accompaniment instead of a full orchestra and with tickets priced at just R80. Perfect for families, schools, community groups and seniors, this condensed performance offers an opportunity to experience one of opera’s most gripping tragedies. At the Duke of Mantua’s glittering court, power, desire and revenge collide as Rigoletto’s love for his daughter Gilda leads him towards a devastating fate. Featuring unforgettable music, including ‘La donna è mobile’ and ‘Caro nome’ as well as the famous Quartet.
Cosí fan tutte
Certain their fiancées could never betray them, the soldiers Ferrando and Guglielmo accept a wager from the cynical Don Alfonso. They stage a departure for war and return in disguise, each courting the other’s beloved, with the maid Despina cheerfully assisting. Dorabella gives in quickly. Fiordiligi resists and then does not. A double wedding is halted by the soldiers’ sudden reappearance, and the four are left facing what they have discovered about themselves.
O Holy Night
Some concerts are events, but this one is a tradition. Each December, Cape Town Opera and the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra fill St George’s Cathedral for O Holy Night, and the combination of carols, candlelight and that particular acoustic has made it one of the warmest nights in the city’s calendar.