The Opera Insights Series prepares opera goers with enjoyable, informative and engaging sessions about productions in San Diego Opera's current season. These free programs are held at the San Diego Central Library in the Neil Morgan Auditorium, located at 330 Park Blvd., in downtown San Diego.
For more information, 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
Making Merry: A Holiday Celebration
Tuesday, December 1, 2026 | 6:00 p.m.
San Diego Central Library, Neil Morgan Auditorium
Registration is highly encouraged here
Start your holiday season with a delightful concert. Join San Diego Opera Resident Conductor and Chorus Master Bruce Stasyna and featured guest artists for an irresistible holiday program featuring music that spans centuries and styles. Filled with songs of the season, beloved carols, modern favorites, and timeless holiday classics, Making Merry is the perfect way to celebrate the joy, warmth, and spirit of the holiday season.
This event is free, but seating is limited and reservations are highly encouraged. Please visit the Opera’s event page to reserve your seat or call (619) 533-7000.
American Voices
Saturday, January 23, 2027 | 2:30 p.m.
San Diego Central Library, Neil Morgan Auditorium
Registration is highly encouraged here
Get a head start on the season of love with an engaging 45-minute recital celebrating American vocal music. Hosted by David Bennett, the Joann Clark General Director and CEO of San Diego Opera, the program features soprano Chelsea Seener Gornall and bass-baritone DeAndre Simmons, accompanied by San Diego Opera Resident Conductor and Chorus Master Bruce Stasyna. Featuring beloved selections from opera, musical theatre, and the American songbook, American Voices celebrates the works of some of our country’s greatest composers, with a special focus on the music of Carlisle Floyd.
This event is free, but seating is limited and reservations are highly encouraged. Please visit the Opera’s event page to reserve your seat or call (619) 533-7000.
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, 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.
Access the Archive
Previous Lectures
We are honored to have strong partnerships with arts and education organizations in our community. 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
History
The history of the opera preview lectures dates to the mid-1950s. Shortly after the downtown Central Library (820 E St.) opened on June 28, 1954, the library began holding an annual "Music Week" that featured concerts, displays, distribution of booklists, and other activities relating to music and opera. Then on the evening of October 30, 1954, the library presented what appears to have been the first of the Opera Preview Lectures. A complete recording of Puccini's Tosca was played to a library audience as a preview of a performance of Tosca that was being given at a local theater by the San Francisco Opera Company.
The person who was most instrumental in developing the lecture series was Mr. William Vere Wolf. Vere Wolf, as he was more commonly known, had joined the staff of the Art, Music and Recreation Section as the third assistant Librarian on January 2, 1955, and was the Music Librarian for many years. A graduate of the University of Illinois Library School, he had a Master of Music degree as well as teaching experience in Illinois. He established the library's Sunday concert series showcasing local musicians and created an in-depth collection of opera, vocal and instrumental scores which still serves the music community of San Diego well. However, he was most loved for his series of opera lectures previewing San Diego Opera performances. From 1956 to 1991, he served as the opera preview lecturer for the San Diego Opera, offering presentations on specific productions and general topics of opera in venues throughout San Diego County. He helped to introduce thousands of people to opera.
After Vere Wolf's tenure, the series was renamed the Opera Insights Series and lectures were presented by Dr. Nicolas Reveles and Dr. Ronald Shaheen. Currently the lectures are presented by San Diego Opera staff and guest lecturers, often enhanced with live music performances.
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!
