WCO Guild Travels
Travel the World with the Washington Concert Opera Guild
The Guild organizes trips to outstanding opera performances outside the D.C. area. These trips include informative tours that provide insights into the local art, food, and culture, behind-the-scenes experiences or meet-the-singers opportunities, and often visits to artists’ studios.
Planning for opera companies to visit never stops!
The first trip for this 2025-2026 seasonto Milan, Italy, for Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” in March 2026 is currently sold out, but more details about this trip are below.*
In April 2026, we will then travel to the Metropolitan Opera for a new opera Innocence with Joyce DeDonato and Rod Gilfrey, both past VocalArts DC singers and Tchaikovsky’s Eugne Onegin on April 22 and 23.
We will end the 25-26 season with a trip to St Louis on June 18, 19 and 20. Performances are The Pirates of Penzance, The Light in the Piazza, A Streetcar Named Desire, ending with Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet. And of particular note! Patricia Racette’s first production as Stage Director after becoming artistic director at the Opera Theater of St. Louis. She is a past WCO principal singer in the role of Jenufa.
A formal announcement with travel details and costs of both trips in the spring will be forthcoming. So mark your calendars for these magnificent trips for the Guild for Washington Concert Opera!
Other past trips have included visits to Pittsburgh Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, San Francisco Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera. The Guild has thoroughly enjoyed traveling to Pesaro, Italy where they were in attendance at the Teatro Rossini and to Zurich, Switzerland where they supported beloved tenor Lawrence Brownlee in his concert performance of La sonnambula with South African soprano Pretty Yende.
*The trip to Milan and the famous La Scala opera house sold out quickly with 25 returning and new members on the trip. We will open with a welcome dinner at an outstanding restaurant in Milan. In addition to the four Wagner operas in the Ring Cycle, we will be visiting Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous Last Supper at Saint Maria e la Gracia church and Dominican convent, the famous duomo (cathedral) when several members will climb the 250 steps to the top and walk an additional 700 steps to explore the entire top of this famous building. We will also take a full day (the opera performances are on March 1,3,5,7 with 3 full free days between) to Vicenza where we will visit the wonderful buildings of Andrea Palladio (vision the architecture of the University of Virginia, the White House, the Capitol building, all reminiscent of Palladio’s ideas.). the Rotunda and the Olympic Theater with its fabulous Trompe L’Oeil scenery.
