Tickets

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Tickets 〰️

Snapshot 2026

West Edge Opera is proud to support these four visionary new operas and creative teams in the 2026 edition of Snapshot, the company’s celebrated showcase of operatic works-in-progress. 


Purchase Tickets

February 28, 2026 at 3pm

First Congregational Church, Berkeley

2345 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA 94704

March 1, 2026 at 3pm

Taube Atrium Theater, San Francisco

Veterans Building 401 Van Ness Avenue
(at McAllister) San Francisco

General Seating: $42.50 online. $40 at the Door.

Underwriter Seats: $252.50 online. $250 at the Door.

Underwriters enjoy premium seating and will be acknowledged publicly. Support goes directly toward artists in the program.


Meet the Creative Teams of Snapshot 2026

Martin Rokeach. Composer

Steven Blum. Librettist

Michelle Ahearn is a local TV news reporter who is about to be aged out of a job. In one horrible moment she causes an accident that kills local football legend Case Stahl and then flees the scene; a story that she’s assigned to cover making her a star while the lie she’s chosen to live causes her to lose everyone she loves. 


JL Marlor. Composer

It's a gorgeous Friday night at UCLA but instead of going out, Austin and Zach are inside, online, comparing their jawlines to pictures of strangers and trying to become "wolves". Austin's little brother Ethan is visiting for the weekend and just can’t understand their new obsession. Cry, Wolf explores the ways these young men use love, friendship, and genuine care for one another to push themselves down darker and deeper ideological rabbit holes.

Clare Fuyuko Bierman. Librettist


Niloufar Nourbakhsh. Composer

Lisa Flanagan. Librettist

Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad defied convention to write about life, culture & sexuality as freely as a man would, becoming a pariah and cut-off from friends and family. On February 13, 1967, after a violent incident, she finds herself in her childhood home at the start of a Solstice feast.


Isaac Io Schankler. Composer

In the world of The Joining, golems are common place artificial companions for the citizens of the Underground. When disaster strikes and traditions must break, can the Undergrounders rely on the prosperous Overland to use the golems for good? 

Aiden K. Feltkamp. Librettist


About Snapshot

In collaboration with San Francisco–based Earplay (www.earplay.org)/ SNAPSHOT provides composers and librettists with something essential—and increasingly rare: institutional support at the earliest, most vulnerable stage of creation.

SNAPSHOT gives artists the opportunity to workshop short operatic works or excerpts of larger projects with world-class vocalists and instrumentalists, bringing new ideas off the page and onto their feet. These performances are presented to the public and reviewed by leading arts voices including the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Classical Voice, KDFC, and KQED.

New operas don’t enter the canon overnight. They are built through experimentation, revision, and live performance. SNAPSHOT creates the space for that process—offering artists the time, resources, and professional environment needed to develop bold new work as it competes for a future on the operatic stage.

By investing in artists early, SNAPSHOT isn’t just presenting new music. It’s shaping the future of opera. 

All participating composers and librettists will also be provided a feedback session with leaders in the new opera field. Previous panelists have included Khori Dastoor (Houston Grand Opera), Bill Gorjance (Peer Music Publishing), Kip Cranna (San Francisco Opera Dramaturg Emeritus), and Joseph Marcheso (Opera San Jose Music Director).


SNAPSHOT ARCHIVE

2024
2023
2022
2020
2021
2019
2018
2017