50th Free Opera in the Park Concert on Sunday, September 7 in Golden Gate Park
Opening Weekend of San Francisco Opera’s 2025–26 Season culminates with outdoor concert tradition presented by San Francisco Chronicle with Eun Sun Kim leading the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and vocal stars
To mark 50 years of Opera in the Park, a Picnic Contest will crown the event’s most outstanding picnic spread
50th opera in the park.pdf Photos
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (August 29, 2025) — The opening weekend festivities celebrating San Francisco Opera’s 103rd season conclude on Sunday, September 7 with the Company’s 50th presentation of Opera in the Park. This popular and free event presented by the San Francisco Chronicle features Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim conducting the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and stars of the Company’s fall season at Robin Williams Meadow in Golden Gate Park.
Classical California KDFC is a marketing partner for Opera in the Park and on-air hosts Maggie Reberg and Dianne Nicolini will welcome the audience. San Francisco Opera’s Tad and Dianne Taube General Director Matthew Shilvock, now in his tenth season at the helm of the Company, will emcee the event. From the casts of the first two operas of the 2025–26 Season—Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto and Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s Dead Man Walking—Opera in the Park soloists scheduled to appear include sopranos Brittany Renee, Olivia Smith, Adela Zaharia; mezzo-sopranos Jamie Barton, J’Nai Bridges, Susan Graham, Nikola Printz; tenor Yongzhao Yu; baritones Amartuvshin Enkhbat, Rod Gilfry; and bass Peixin Chen in a program of arias and ensembles from operas by Rossini, Puccini, Verdi and Heggie, among others, along with hits from musical theater and Butterfly YY, an orchestral piece by Bay Area composer and bassist in the San Francisco Opera Orchestra Shinji Eshima.
PICNIC CONTEST
In honor of the 50th Opera in the Park concert and five decades of elaborate picnics brought to the park by attendees, San Francisco Opera is holding a contest for the best picnic spread at the September 7 concert. Claim your patch of grass and deck it out with the most impressive picnic you can dream up.
The celebrity judges for the Opera in the Park Picnic Contest are Hayes Valley neighborhood restaurateurs George and Anissa Dingle. With over 25 years of experience between them, George is a Michelin-trained chef and Anissa a sommelier. After running Hayes Valley favorite Monsieur Benjamin, the Dingles will open this fall Dingles Public House, the new British gastropub at Inn at the Opera, just across the street from the Opera House. During Opera in the Park, George and Anissa will be scouting the grounds during the first half of the concert, looking for the ultimate picnic to award the grand prize!
50 YEARS OF OPERA IN THE PARK
Established by former San Francisco Opera General Director Kurt Herbert Adler in 1971, Opera in the Park celebrates the opening of the Company’s season with a free outdoor concert. The annual event now typically draws more than 10,000 to San Francisco’s idyllic Golden Gate Park for an afternoon of arias, duets and popular song. Many operatic luminaries have performed at Opera in the Park, including Montserrat Caballé, Marilyn Horne and Renata Scotto. Luciano Pavarotti appeared at Opera in the Park on three occasions, beginning in 1973 with soprano Licia Albanese for the series’ second event, a concert to honor the memory of Company founder Gaetano Merola. When the Music Concourse and bandshell sustained damage after the 1998 earthquake, the concerts were moved to Sharon Meadow, later renamed Robin Williams Meadow in 2018. Opera in the Park did not take place in 1972, 1990, 2020 and 2021; the 1980 event was modified on account of rain, and the singers agreed to perform with piano accompaniment.
ABOUT SAN FRANCISCO OPERA
Under the leadership of Tad and Dianne Taube General Director Matthew Shilvock and Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim, San Francisco Opera celebrated its Centennial Season in 2022–23. Beginning with its first seasons during the 1920s, San Francisco Opera has long been a home for new operas and, since 1961, the Company has commissioned and co-commissioned more than 30 new operas. For its 103rd season, the Company presents the world premiere of Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang’s The Monkey King, a new production of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal, a 25th-anniversary presentation of Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s Dead Man Walking (a San Francisco Opera commission in 2000), Verdi’s Rigoletto, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, Richard Strauss’ Elektra, and a variety of concerts and special events. Learn more at sfopera.com.
*For the complete press release, open the PDF version above.