First Coast Opera opens its 27th season this week with a double bill of comic operas, a fully catered dinner on opening night, and a touring schedule that stretches from St. Augustine to Mount Dora. The production, titled Something's Brewing, pairs J.S. Bach's Coffee Cantata with Donizetti's Rita and runs September 10 through 13 across St. Augustine, Jacksonville Beach and Amelia Island.
The opening night performance on September 10 at Celebration Hall at St. Anastasia is formatted as a dinner opera experience, with VIP pre-show reception doors opening at 5:30 p.m. ahead of general admission at 6:00 p.m., according to Visit St. Augustine. General and Artistic Director Curtis Tucker and guest soprano Cristina Bakhoum Sanchez discussed the new season and its mix of music, comedy and community experiences, as reported by WJXT News4JAX. Tucker has led First Coast Opera as general and artistic director since 2014.
Bach's Coffee Cantata, composed around 1734 on a libretto by Christian Friedrich Henrici, is a 25-minute comic mini-opera that satirizes 18th-century European coffee obsessions through a battle of wills between a daughter and her father, according to Temple University's Performing Arts News. It is paired with Rita, a one-act domestic farce Donizetti completed in 1841 but which went unperformed during his lifetime due to theater contract disputes, only premiering posthumously in Paris in 1860, per Ricordi.
A Soprano With a Global Résumé
Bakhoum Sanchez performs as Lieschen in Coffee Cantata and takes the title role in Rita. She is an Afro-Latina artist of Egyptian and Mexican heritage who originated the role of Roya in Niloufar Nourbakhsh's PBS-featured opera We The Innumerable, according to the singer's own biography posted at cristinabakhoumsanchez.com. Tucker himself brings decades of regional opera leadership to the role; before arriving at First Coast Opera, he served as General Director of Opera Saratoga in New York, where he produced 22 summer festival productions and led the company's rebranding from the Lake George Opera Festival, per his professional biography.
Touring Beyond St. Johns County
Beyond its scheduled stops in St. Augustine, Jacksonville Beach and Amelia Island, First Coast Opera is also touring Something's Brewing to Mount Dora, Florida, extending its reach across central and northeast Florida, according to the Ponte Vedra Recorder. For the September 12 matinee at Celebration Hall at St. Anastasia, children and teens under 18 receive free admission, up to two free youth tickets per adult ticket, while young adults under 30 can purchase $30 Young Patron tickets, the same report notes.
State Funding Returns After 2024 Cuts
The touring push and youth pricing arrive alongside a financial milestone for the company: First Coast Opera was awarded a $45,000 General Program Support grant from the State of Florida, funneled through the Florida Division of Arts and Culture and the National Endowment for the Arts, for its 2026–2027 season. It marks the company's first state funding award since Florida eliminated program grants in June 2024, according to First Coast Opera. Florida lawmakers reinstated select competitive cultural grants for fiscal year 2026 after completely defunding program support two years earlier.
Tickets and more information on Something's Brewing are available at firstcoastopera.org, per WJXT News4JAX's report. The company was founded in St. Augustine in January 2000 by soprano Barbara Norris and conductor Anthony Fast, launching with a concert titled An Evening of Opera before becoming Northeast Florida's first producing opera company, according to First Coast Opera's own history.
What's Next for the 27th Season
Following Something's Brewing, First Coast Opera's 27th season continues with Donizetti's The Elixir of Love on December 31, 2026, and January 2, 2027, and concludes with Aaron Copland's The Tender Land on February 27–28, 2027, staged outdoors at Ancient City Farmstead, according to the Ponte Vedra Recorder. Staging Copland's Depression-era opera on an actual working farmstead is designed to match the story's rural setting, the outlet reports.
