During that time, many prominent singers appeared in the company's productions including Plácido Domingo, Beverly Sills, Norman Treigle, Sherrill Milnes, Montserrat Caballé, Jan Peerce, Robert Merrill, Roberta Peters, Shirley Verrett, Lawrence Tibbett, Richard Tucker, Martina Arroyo, James Morris, Elinor Ross and Barbara Daniels.

One of the highlights of the de Blasis era was a new interpretation of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore which changed the setting from the Basque region of Spain in the 1820s to the "Wild West" of late 19th century Texas.

Under his leadership Cincinnati Opera further enlarged its repertory with many company premieres outside the standard repertory including Janáček's Jenůfa, Britten's The Turn of the Screw, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, Schoenberg's Erwartung, Heggie's Dead Man Walking, Strauss's Elektra, Poulenc's La Voix Humaine, Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins, Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis, and the U.S. premiere of Peter Bengtson's The Maids.

"[6] The 2008 Summer Festival, the first to be fully programmed by Mirageas, included the French version of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor plus the company premiere of Daniel Catán's Florencia en el Amazonas.

The company's 2009 season featured four operas set in Spain: Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Carlo, Carmen, and the regional premiere of Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamar.

The 2010 season presented a 90th Anniversary Gala Concert, featuring, among others, guest hosts Ryan Seacrest and Sherrill Milnes and singers Maria Luigia Borsi, Angela Brown, Christine Brewer, Denyce Graves, and Richard Leech.

Performances in the Corbett Theater have included Philip Glass's Galileo Galilei (2013) and Francesco Cavalli's 1651 opera La Calisto (2014), and the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon and William M. Hoffman's Morning Star.

Its 2017 season consisted of La Bohème, a company premiere of Frida by Robert Xavier Rodríguez, a silent film-styled The Magic Flute from director Barrie Kosky and 1927, and a production of Missy Mazzoli's new opera Song from the Uproar.

[8] In 2019, the company presented the world premiere of Scott Davenport Richards and David Cote's Blind Injustice, based on the book of the same name by Ohio Innocence Project director Mark A. Godsey chronicling the true stories of six people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes and eventually exonerated.