CONNECT with the CityOpera Insights Series
The Opera Insights Series prepares opera goers with enjoyable, informative and engaging sessions about productions in San Diego Opera's current season. These free lectures will be held at the San Diego Central Library in the Neil Morgan Auditorium, located at 330 Park Blvd., in downtown San Diego.
For more information about the lectures, please call the Central Library at 619-236-5800. For more information about the productions and other San Diego Opera outreach activities, visit the San Diego Opera's website.
Current Season
San Diego Opera Presents: Songs in the Key of Love
February 23, 2025 | 2:30 p.m.
San Diego Central Library, Neil Morgan Auditorium
Registration is encouraged here.
Soprano Laynee Dell and Tenor Arnold Geis join San Diego Opera resident conductor and chorus master Bruce Stasyna as they celebrate Valentine’s Day with the great love songs of opera and musical theatre. Featuring selections from the best composers—Verdi to Romberg, Bernstein to Lloyd Webber—this irresistible recital will inspire you, rekindle fond memories, and might even make your heart skip a beat!
This program is free to the public with open seating. Registration is encouraged at San Diego Opera’s website here.
Vere Wolf Archive
We are pleased to announce a new resource for opera lectures: The Vere Wolf Opera Previews Lecture Archive! SDPL’s first music librarian, William Vere Wolf, established this signature series in the 1950s and shared his dynamic and informative lectures throughout San Diego County for decades. Thanks to a recent donation of sound recordings, we have created an archive of these historic Central Library programs and look forward to adding more recordings in the following months. Check back for new additions!
This archive comprises digitized recordings of Opera Previews lectures by Music Librarian William Vere Wolf (1917-2003) at the old San Diego Central Library that was located at 820 E St. in Downtown San Diego It also includes scanned images of the typed lecture notes that Wolf would hand out to attendees at his lectures.
Previous Lectures
We are honored to have strong partnerships with arts and education organizations in our community, and thanks to our collaborations with San Diego Opera and UC San Diego, we have recordings of four of our Opera Insights Series programs from 2016-2019. Please see below for programs filmed by UCSD-TV in our Neil Morgan Auditorium.
The Central Park Five with Composer Anthony Davis
Recorded on Dec. 7, 2019
Presented by UC San Diego Extension in partnership with the Opera Insights Series.
Double Verdi (La Traviata and Falstaff)
Opera Insights Series/San Diego OperaTalk, recorded on Jan. 6, 2017
David T. Little's Soldier Songs
Opera Insights Series/San Diego OperaTalk, recorded on Oct. 4, 2016
Puccini X 2 (Madama Butterfly and Tosca)
Opera Insights Series/San Diego OperaTalk, recorded on Feb. 5, 2016
SD Opera Presents: Gioachino Rossini: The Man, The Music, The Food!
San Diego Opera is pleased to share its four-part Zoom lecture series with San Diego Public Library patrons! These free lectures tie into their upcoming production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. Text and image courtesy of SD Opera.
In April 2021, San Diego Opera took a deep dive into the great composer’s life with four Zoom sessions led by Dr. Nic! See below for a description of each lecture and a link to the recording, uploaded on SDO's YouTube page.
Rossini’s Early Life and Times (Recorded on April 7, 2021)
Think of Gioachino Rossini as the Andrew Lloyd Webber of his time...he came to know what his audiences really wanted and how to get them to clamor for more! To truly understand how Rossini became the most successful (and the wealthiest!) composer of his time, Dr. Nic will take us through some of the important trends in art and culture that surrounded him when he was just getting started...as a child, an itinerant opera coach, as a music student...and see how his life was influenced by it all. We'll look at Rossini during a time of extraordinary development in music, art, literature and politics, and how his life and works were at the center of it all.
Rossini and the Mezzo-Soprano (Recorded on April 14, 2021)
One of the more interesting aspects of Rossini’s operas is that he often featured the contralto or mezzo-soprano in music of sparkling quality. We think of Rosina in Barber, of course, as well as Angelina in La Cenerentola and Isabella in L’Italiana in Algeri. In today’s session, Dr. Nic will survey some of the delightful arias from this vocal repertoire, which include feats of acrobatic coloratura that have to be heard to be believed!
The Barber of Seville (Recorded on April 21, 2021)
In today’s session, we’ll examine some of the highlights of Rossini’s greatest comic opera, The Barber of Seville. Using video examples and presiding at the piano, Dr. Nic will show us what it is about this delightful comedy that keeps us coming back to it. Comedy in music is extraordinarily difficult, but Rossini made it seem easy. Today, we’ll examine why that’s so, and here’s a hint: it’s all in the timing. The combination of rhythmic drive, sparkling melodies and comic timing make Barber one of the great musical comedies of all time, and in this session, we’ll take our time to appreciate its delights!
Rossini the Gourmand! (Recorded on April 28, 2021)
“I know of no more admirable occupation than eating; that is really eating!” Rossini was a man who truly loved food, and as his success and pocketbook grew, he saw to it that he was surrounded by the finest culinary inventions of the day. He made it a point to befriend one of the earliest ‘celebrity’ chefs, Marie-Antoine Carême, creator of Tournedos Rossini, in honor of the composer. In today’s session, Dr. Nic will introduce us to a few of the numerous recipes created in honor of the composer, beginning with the Rossini cocktail, which will kick off our time together!
SDPL staff have compiled a sampling of resources in our collection relating to Rossini, The Barber of Seville, and singers mentioned in Dr. Nic's lectures, and you can view that list and place holds here.