Opera North has announced its 2017 season, with tickets going on sale this week through the Lebanon Opera House for a trio of works featuring memorable settings and even more memorable women: the tragedy Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini, the light opera La Belle Helene by the 19th century French composer Jacques Offenbach and the exuberant mid-century American musical Kiss Me, Kate by Cole Porter.

The season will run from July 29 through Aug. 14, and the company will continue to offer the same flexibility in ticketing it did last year. Patrons can pay for season subscriptions or individual tickets now, but reserve the actual dates closer to summer. Discounts on tickets are available through the end of this year. Kiss Me, Kate opens on July 29; La Belle Helene opens Aug. 1; and Madama Butterfly opens Aug. 4.

But if you can’t wait until summer to see Opera North, the company will be performing its holiday perennial Amahl and the Night Visitors at the Lebanon Opera House on Friday, Dec. 16 at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Dec. 17 at 5 p.m.

There will also be two free or reduced-price school performances on Tuesday, at 11 a.m. at the Capital Center for the Arts in Concord, and on Friday, Dec. 16 at 10 a.m. at Lebanon Opera House.

Although the theme of the summer season is exotic adventures, Haile said, strong women were also a central through line of the Opera North 2016 season. As in ballet opera is a performing art form in which roles for women are particularly rich, even dominant.

Madama Butterfly, the story of a young Japanese woman who falls in love with an American naval officer, is perhaps Puccini’s most poignant opera. Offenbach’s La Belle Helene, first performed in Paris in 1864, is a spoof on the Greek myth of Helen of Troy and her lover Paris, whose affair is the igniting spark of the Trojan War. And there’s Cole Porter’s glorious score and lyrics for Kiss Me, Kate, which is a musical within a musical and is partially adapted from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew.

La Belle Helene is delightful, said Haile. “People will feel the same way about Helene as they did about (last year’s production of) Daughter of the Regiment.”

What is notable about the 2017 season, said Haile, is that the productions will maintain the same high standards that were set last season in direction, production design and singing.

Russell Treyz, who directed the company’s triumphant production of Tosca, returns to direct Madama Butterfly. He will be working with set designer David Arsenault, who did the set last year for Daughter of the Regiment (Arsenault worked on the current revival on Broadway of the play Les Liaisons Dangereuses). Evan Pappas, who last year directed both Evita and Daughter of the Regiment, will direct Kiss Me, Kate. The creative team for La Belle Helene is yet to be determined, Haile said.

Summerfest 2017 will also feature a pre-season that runs from July 8 until the opening night of Kiss Me, Kate.

The company will offer recitals at the Fells in Newbury, N.H., and a scenic dinner cruise on Lake Sunapee and will also continue its collaboration with the National Park Service, as it did this year to commemorate the service’s 100th anniversary.

“We’re now really building these relationships with other organizations in the Upper Valley, and outlining the fact that the Upper Valley is a national cultural destination,” said Haile.

For information go to operanorth.org or the Lebanon Opera House at 603-448-0400.

Nicola Smith can be reached at nsmith@vnews.com.