Metropolitan Opera star mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano will have a season full of premieres and debuts.  Major Highlights of a diverse season include the following engagements:

2021-22 Highlights

September 12-19, 2021
Arizona Opera / Workshops of Gregg Kallor’s opera-in-progress, Frankenstein / “Sketches of Frankenstein,” an earlier version for three singers, cello, and piano, was presented to rave reviews at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn in 2018. Kallor intends to create a two-act, 120-minute fully-staged production with eight characters and a chamber orchestra.

January 14-22, 2022
Houston, TX / Houston Grand Opera / Poulenc Dialogues of the Carmelites / Debut in the role of Mother Marie with the Houston Grand Opera

February 17, 2022 
New York / Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center / New York premiere of Marc Neikrug’s chamber opera A Song by Mahler. Cano joins baritone Kelly Markgraf, David Shifrin on clarinet and the FLUX Quartet for an opera that centers on the agonizing reality of two characters: a classical singer who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s and her accompanist husband. Composer’s note and program notes available here. 

February 24-27, 2022 
Chicago / Chicago Symphony / Debut with the Chicago Symphony and Conductor Riccardo Muti / Beethoven Ninth Symphony 

March 18, 20, 2022
Philadelphia, PA / Verizon Hall / Philadelphia Orchestra, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Conductor / World Premiere of Kevin Puts’ The Hours (concert version), an adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s novel of the same name, co-commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera. The Hours chronicles a day in the life of three women from three different eras with interwoven stories connected to Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway. Though separated through time by nearly 80 years, Virginia Woolf (Jennifer Johnson Cano), Laura Brown (Kelli O’Hara), and Clarissa Vaughan (a modern-day Mrs. Dalloway herself, portrayed by Renée Fleming) struggle with the notion of living their lives for someone else. 

July 2022 
Cincinnati / Cincinnati Opera / World Premiere of Gregory Spears’s and Tracy K. Smith’s  Castor and Patience, in the role of Celeste. / The opera is set during the mortgage crisis of 2008, with flashbacks to 1966 as well as to the 19th Century, and tells the story of African American cousins who find themselves at odds over the fate of land owned by members of their family.