Join us for a pre-performance champagne reception at the opera, featuring an exclusive talk by Opera Director David Gockley.

About the opera:

The great tragic love story returns in a classic new-to-San Francisco production by Broadway legend Harold Prince (Sweeney Todd, The Phantom of the Opera). Daniella Dess?Ê sings the title role, a young Japanese geisha who falls for a charismatic but callous American sailor (tenor Stefano Secco). Opera News praised Dess?Ê for her "penetrating, extravagant, unabashedly emotional" voice.

Prince's staging, created for Lyric Opera of Chicago and infused with touches of traditional Japanese theater, "remains one of the most beautiful in Lyric's repertory" (Opera News). Music Director Nicola Luisotti "mixes Puccini's colors strongly and fearlessly, so that the collision of East and West is even more menacing than Puccini knew" (The Times of London).