Broadway show Once Upon a Mattress added to the 2025 schedule

By Peter Alexander Jan. 5 at 5:45 p.m.

Central City Opera has announced their full summer 2025 season, adding the Mary Rodgers musical comedy Once Upon a Mattress to the two operas previously announced.

The season will open June 28 with Rossini’s comic masterpiece The Barber of Seville. Always a favorite with audiences, Barber returns to the Central City stage for the first time in 12 years. 

The second opera of the summer will be the one-act opera The Knock by composer Aleksandra Vrebalov and librettist Deborah Brevoort. Named for the expression military families use for notifications of soldiers’ deaths, this patriotic opera explores feelings of hope and heartache during the Iraq war. The Knock was commissioned by the Glimmerglass Festival and Cincinnati Opera through a grant from the Mellon Foundation. 

The Cincinnati Opera production in the summer of 2023, directed by CCO’s artistic director Alison Moritz, sold out five performances and an added matinee.

Based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea,” Once Upon a Mattress opened off Broadway in May, 1959, and moved to Broadway later the same year. The musical score is by Mary Rodgers, with lyrics by Marshall Barer and book by Barer, Jay Thompson and Dean Fuller. A novelist as well as screenwriter and composer, Mary Rodgers is the daughter of the famed Broadway composer Richard Rodgers.

That original production starred Carol Burnett in her first Broadway role, and received Tony Award nominations for Best Musical and Best Actress in a Musical (Burnett). A recent popular revival starring Sutton Foster and Michael Urie played on Broadway July 31 to Nov. 30, 2024, with additional performances at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angles in December and January. 

All three shows will be performed in repertory at the Central City Opera house between June 28 and Aug. 3 (see the full schedule below). They open with 7:30 p.m. performances on successive Saturdays, starting June 28. Most successive performances are 2 p.n. matinees, as listed in the schedule below. All performances will be in the historic Central City Opera House.

Subscription renewals are currently available for prior subscribers, and the Central City Box Office is taking requests for new subscriptions. Ticket sales to single performances will begin at a later date.

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Central City Opera
Summer 2025 Festival Schedule
All performances in the Central City Opera House

Gioachino Rossini: The Barber of Seville

7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 28, Saturday, July 19
2 p.m. Wednesday, July 2; Friday, July 4; Sunday, July 6; Saturday, July 12; Tuesday, July 15; Friday, July 25; Sunday, July 26; Wednesday, July 30; Sunday, Aug. 3

Aleksandra Vrebalov and Deborah Brevoort: The Knock

7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 5; Saturday, Aug. 2
2 p.m. Wednesday, July 9; Friday, July 11; Sunday, July 13; Saturday, July 19; Tuesday, July 22

Mary Rodgers and Marshall Barer: Once Upon a Mattress

7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 12; Saturday, July 26
2 p.m. Wednesday, July 16; Friday, July 18; Sunday, July 20; Wednesday, July 23; Saturday, July 27; Tuesday, July 29; Friday, Aug. 1; Saturday, Aug. 2

Subscription renewals are currently available HERE, and new subscribers can join a waiting list. Sales of tickets to single performances will open later.