The Dallas Opera has provided a few more details of its first season in the Winspear Opera House. The company announced on Monday that the season will open on Oct. 23, 2009, with Verdi’s Otello and will include the world premiere of Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick.

Jonathan Pell. the company’s director of artistic administration, said Tuesday that the Dallas Opera has first dibs on scheduling in the new theater. The company decided to open in the fall but shift the schedule toward the spring (it will end in May). The reason, he said, was that the Thanksgiving-Christmas/New Year’s period has always presented scheduling difficulties, so the company decided to avoid them by leaving it open. More fall productions may be added in future seasons.

Pell said that the company will alternate performances of Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Donizetti’s Don Pasquale in the February-March period and Puccini’s Madame Butterfly and Heggie’s Moby-Dick in April-May. Each pair will overlap, so that in each case opera-goers will have the opportunity over two weekends to see two operas on successive days.

Specific dates won’t be announced for another year, but Pell said that each opera will be presented six times, as opposed to the current four. If demand is high, more performances may be added in future seasons. The Winspear Opera House will have 2,200 seats, as opposed to 3,400 in the Music Hall, the company’s home since it was founded in 1957.