Ring in the new year with a festive program of Handel’s complete Water Music, select arias by Mozart, and a musical surprise. Led by internationally renowned conductor Marc Minkowski and featuring mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey, this concert is sure to set the tone for an inspiring and hopeful year ahead.

Andris Nelsons leads some of the most acclaimed stars of opera today in performances of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa, a work considered by many the greatest American opera. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1958, Vanessa premiered at the Metropolitan Opera that year. Barber wrote the opera on a libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti; they aimed for a cosmopolitan, nostalgic work on lost love and the consequences of self-delusion. Barber’s romantic lyricism is ever-present in this powerfully affecting work, a centerpiece of this season’s E Pluribus Unum: From Many, One focus.

With pianist Myra Huang

American mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey makes her Cal Performances debut with an inviting program of lieder, cabaret songs, and popular favorites sung in English, French, and German. Hankey made a big splash in the opera world when she appeared in a last-minute cast change as Octavian in the Metropolitan Opera’s Der Rosenkavalier in 2023, where the New York Times praised her “mighty yet smooth sound…tireless energy and dramatic skill.”

In demand internationally for her compelling stage presence and lustrous tone, Hankey opts for more intimate fare in recital, including songs by Kurt Weill and Cole Porter, Poulenc and Satie, as well as Robert Schumann’s much-loved Dichterliebe.

When the planned performance of his opera seria Ariadne auf Naxos in the palace of a Viennese nouveau riche is combined with the dance masquerade of an Italian comedy troupe, the young composer, played by mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey, is initially in despair.

The Wiener Staatsoper returns to Monaco with Così fan tutte, the third and last part of Mozart’s famous da Ponte Trilogy, performed in a semi-staged version at the Grimaldi Forum.

The audience is immersed in a world full of odd characters and situations, fantastic elements with several demonic, breathtaking moments and a vital, rich score. The title character, modelled on the complex Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, finds himself among his own stories, fascinated equally by art and by love, attracted by the female characters and duped by his rivals. Director Lydia Steier with her team and the conductor Bertrand de Billy will collaborate to produce an opulent scenic and musical realization. Samantha Hankey appears as La Muse/Nicklausse in this coproduction with the MusikTheater an der Wien.

The Company's legendary production of Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier by Otto Schenk will be conducted by Philippe Jordan and performed by a spectacular cast including mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey as Octavian.

The third new production at Festival 2026 will see Glyndebourne favourite Laurent Pelly direct Richard Strauss’ deftly interwoven story of love and art: Ariadne auf Naxos. The cast includes Rachel Willis-Sørensen as Ariadne, Samantha Hankey as Composer, David Butt Philip as Bacchus and Alina Wunderlin performing another key coloratura role as Zerbinetta, after impressing as the Queen of the Night in Festival 2024. Robin Ticciati will conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra.