Shanghai Grand Theatre unveils its 2025/26 performance season

Shanghai Grand Theatre announced on Thursday its 2025/26 performance season entitled Replay, consisting of 860 shows of 75 productions.

A list of the top 10 productions brings together operas, ballets, and musicals performed by esteemed companies from home and abroad.

One of the oldest and most traditional ensembles in the world, the Bayerisches Staatsorchester from Munich, Germany, will make its second tour in Shanghai since its last visit in 1984. The opera and orchestra of Bayerisches Staatsorchester will present Giuseppe Verdi's Otello in Concert on Oct 2 and 5, and Richard Wagner's Der Fliegende Hollander on Oct 1, 4 and 6, respectively.

A second Wagner opera will be performed in April 2026. As the second project of the Bayreuth in Shanghai Project, Die Walkure, the second part of Wagner's monumental opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, will be directed by Katharina Wagner, the granddaughter of Richard Wagner and the general manager of the Bayreuth Festival since 2008.

Giuseppe Verdi's final opera, Falstaff, written at the age of 80, will return to SGT on Sept 5-7 under the baton of Xu Zhong, president of Shanghai Opera House.

Les Miserables: The Staged Concert Spectacular, the 40th anniversary edition of the legendary musical, will make a total of 64 performances from Nov 4 to Dec 28. One of the most anticipated shows in SGT's new season, the tickets sold out immediately after the box office opened. It has been 23 years since the last tour of Les Miserables in Shanghai. The original musical has been performed in 448 cities across 57 countries and regions.

Another musical, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, adapted from Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece War and Peace, will come back to Shanghai in concert in 2026.

Two vocal artists will take the stage at SGT in October this year. The 2023 Kennedy Center Honors recipient and five-time Grammy Award winner, soprano Renee Fleming, will return to SGT on Oct 19 after her performance in 2007. The Grammy Award and Gramophone Award-winning Sir Bryn Terfel, a bass-baritone from Wales, will give a concert on Oct 26.

One of the most celebrated ballet companies in the world, Mariinsky Ballet, will present Le Corsaire on Oct 22 and 23. Based on the poem of the same title by British poet Lord Byron, it was adapted by the composer Adolphe Adam, and has been hailed as "the perfect combination of the 19th-century French ballet and Russian ballet".