A pair of time-tested audience favorites, Don Giovanni and Carmen, will anchor the Nashville Opera’s 2015-16 season. But between the mainstage bookends of Mozart and Bizet, the other half of the season is made up of the kind of newer works that are putting the company on the national map.

The story of the longest-held prisoner of war in Vietnam is at the center of Glory Denied. Composer Tom Cipullo adapted the oral history of Colonel Jim Thompson into a libretto, using direct quotes of the veteran and his family members to tell about his nine years in captivity and a turbulent readjustment to life back home.

While the opera has been performed in New York and Texas, the November production in the Noah Liff Opera Center will be the first staging of the work in Tennessee, where Thompson’s wife and children settled after breaking ties with him.

In January, the Nashville Opera will take a lighter turn, performing the world premiere of a very modern comic opera, Three Way. Robert Paterson wrote the jazz-infused score to accompany an edgy libretto from drama critic David Cote about power and sex in the near future, complete with a dominatrix and a robotic boyfriend.

Watch a semi-staged portion of Three Way. “The Companion” is about a woman whose android lover needs a software upgrade:

The American Opera Project gave Three Way bare-bones workshop performances in 2012 and 2014, but the Nashville shows will be the first fully-staged production. The company will also give the opera its New York premiere with a run of shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the summer of 2017.

But New York audiences won’t have to wait that long for a taste of the Nashville Opera’s style. This June,  Artistic Director John Hoomes is headed to Lincoln Center. He’ll recreate the Nashville production of Daniel Catalan’s Florencia en el Amazones for the New York City Opera, complete with trippy multimedia effects first seen in the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

October 6 & 8, 2016 in Andrew Jackson Hall, Tennessee Performing Arts Center

Glory Denied by Tom Cipullo

November 11-13, 2016 at Noah Liff Opera Center

Three Way by Robert Paterson

January 27-29, 2017 in James K. Polk Theater, Tennessee Performing Arts Center

Carmen by Georges Bizet

April 6 & 8, 2017 in Andrew Jackson Hall, Tennessee Performing Arts Center