OPERA RETURNS TO RIVERSIDE,
AND IT’S BRINGING A 54-PIECE ORCHESTRA

The Riverside Lyric Opera’s gala concert on March 7 marks
a rare moment for the Inland Empire: a full-scale operatic
event with world-class talent, right in its own backyard.

Riverside has one of the largest collections of Mission-style architecture in Southern California, a university campus that keeps expanding, and a population now north of 300,000. What it has not had, for longer than anyone seems comfortable admitting, is opera. That changes on March 7, when Riverside Lyric Opera presents its Grand Re-Opening Gala Concert at UC Riverside’s University Theatre. And the company is not easing back in with a modest recital and a rented Steinway. They’re fielding a 54-piece orchestra, four soloists with international credentials, and a program built from the repertoire’s greatest arias and ensembles. Go big or stay home, apparently.

The man behind Riverside Lyric Opera is, improbably enough, one of the soloists on stage that evening. Anthony León, the American-born Cuban-Colombian tenor who I interviewed back in 2023, is the company’s founder, CEO, Chairman of the Board, and Artistic Director. He is 29 years old. That alone would be a story worth telling, but León is not some well-connected arts administrator who dabbles in singing. He is one of the most decorated young tenors working today, and he is building an opera company from scratch while keeping up an international career that runs through Glyndebourne, the Met, and Lyric Opera of Chicago (see Stage and Cinema‘s review of Così Fan Tutte). I’m not sure when the man sleeps.

Anthony León

León swept both the Grand Prize and the Zarzuela Prize at the 2022 Operalia competition, Plácido Domingo’s personal talent search, which has launched more major careers than most conservatories manage in a decade. He followed that with a Grand Finals win at the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition in 2023. His 2025/2026 calendar alone reads like a provocation: house debuts at the Teatro Regio di Torino, Glyndebourne, and Lyric Opera of Chicago, a return to LA Opera as Fenton in Falstaff, and a spot alongside Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic in Estévez’s “Cantata Criolla” at Dudamel’s Disney Hall farewell gala. Reviewing his role debut as Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni for Stage and Cinema, I wrote that “Anthony León’s role debut as Don Ottavio was spectacular. In his rendition of “Il Mio Tesoro” (“My Treasure”), a veritable vocal obstacle course, he flawlessly executed every point with a remarkable level of sophistication and grace. His light lyric tenor instrument showed beauty, freedom of tone, and outstanding breath control.” That he is also the person who organized this entire evening, recruited its orchestra and soloists, and created a vision for a new opera company simply astounds.

Louis Lohraseb

The evening’s music director is Louis Lohraseb, who will lead the 54-piece orchestra from the podium. Lohraseb made his professional debut at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in 2019 and has since turned up at the Semperoper Dresden, Staatsoper Hamburg, Komische Oper Berlin, and LA Opera. He is still young enough that his career feels like it’s gaining altitude rather than cruising. I reviewed his work in LA Opera’s Barber of Seville for Stage and Cinema and came away struck by how much personality he brought to the pit: “From the moment the orchestra’s overture began, a subtle sophistication pervaded the performance. The crisp and ethereal execution foreshadowed the meticulous care that conductor Louis Lohraseb would lavish upon the production. Droll horn and wind solos, whimsically extended trills, transparent textures, and a touch of indulgence during Rossini’s exhilarating crescendos all acknowledged the music’s buoyant charm.” A gala format will test different muscles: holding dramatic shape across a patchwork of excerpts, keeping the energy from sagging between numbers. But Lohraseb strikes me as the type who thrives on exactly that kind of structural problem.

Erica Petrocelli

Soprano Erica Petrocelli has built her reputation in houses and roles that reward precision over volume. Her Fiordiligi and Donna Clara at LA Opera under James Conlon, her Micaëla and Pamina at Opera Theatre of St. Louis, her Donna Anna in Sarasota: these are parts that ask a singer to think, not just produce beautiful tone. And Petrocelli does think. Reviewing her Fiordiligi in LA Opera’s Così fan tutte for Stage and Cinema, I wrote that “there was an innate brightness to her soprano, a shimmer that lends itself beautifully to Mozart, yet she never sacrificed warmth for brilliance.” That balance is harder to pull off than most listeners realize, and it’s exactly the quality that makes her right for a program mixing Mozart with heavier repertoire.

Ethan Vincent

Baritone Ethan Vincent, a Mexican-American singer, opened the current Met season covering Salvador Dalí in Mason Bates’ The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and Schaunard in La Bohème. Next comes his Opéra de Montréal debut as Escamillo in Carmen, and then, in the 2026/27 season, a Met stage debut as Jose Castro in a new production of La Fanciulla del West. These are the kind of assignments that indicate a house wants to invest in a voice, not just borrow it for a night. The Riverside audience gets to hear him in a 500-seat theater instead of the Met’s 3,800-seat cavern, and that alone is worth the drive.

Maia Aramburú

Then there is Peruvian soprano Maia Aramburú, still only 26, whose voice Opera Wire has described as possessing a sweet and sparkling timbre with rich, expansive resonance. She has sold out concerts across Peru three years running, won the Martha Mifflin Award for Best Peruvian Voice at the Concurso Latinoamericano de Canto Lírico (a competition run by the tenor Ernesto Palacio), and earned recognition from the Sphinx Organization as an MPower Artist. She was a finalist in the Duncan Williams Voice Competition with New York City Opera and placed third in the George Shirley competition. When a 26-year-old with that résumé shows up on a gala program, you stop thinking about what was and start paying attention to what’s next.

But what interests me most about this concert is not any single name on the program. It’s what the event says about the Inland Empire’s cultural life. Riverside County’s population has blown past 2.4 million. The region has invested seriously in its cultural infrastructure over the last decade: the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art opened in 2022, the Fox Performing Arts Center underwent a major renovation, and UCR keeps expanding its arts programs. Yet professional opera, which demands more bodies, more rehearsal time, and more money per minute of performance than almost any other art form, has stayed away. A 54-piece orchestra in a university theater is not the same thing as a fully staged production at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and Riverside Lyric Opera is not pretending it is. But this is a serious opening statement. And the fact that its driving force is a 29-year-old tenor who could easily fill his calendar with nothing but international engagements tells you something about what Riverside native León believes Riverside deserves. The company is betting that the audience exists if you respect it enough to bring the real thing.

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photos courtesy of Riverside Lyric Opera

Riverside Lyric Opera
First Annual Opera Gala
UC Riverside University Theater, 900 University Ave
Saturday, March 7, 2026, at 7
doors open at 6:30for drinks, snacks, and pre-show festivities
for tickets, visit UC Riverside
formal wear (black tie & jacket for men) suggested for the full gala experience,
but this is SoCal: jeans and a t-shirt will get you through the door just fine–
what matters is that you show up

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