Several years ago, because that’s how things work in the far-ahead world of opera, General Director Matthew Shilvock must have gathered his staff around and begun making plans for theSan Francisco Opera’s centennial. I wasn’t in the meeting, of course, but I have a general idea of how it might have gone.

“2022 - 23个赛季将标志着这家公司的100 - year anniversary,” Shilvock must have said, “and here’s what I’m thinking about by way of celebration. Let’s mount the strongest, most artistically successful season San Francisco has seen in half a century.”

Whereupon everyone around the table nodded vigorously and said, “Great idea, boss,” because that’s what you say to the boss in that situation. (At least, that’s whatIsay.)

This hypothetical backstory may not be historically accurate, but astonishingly, the result was the same as if it had been. The Opera season that concludes Saturday, July 1, with one last performance of Puccini’s“Madame Butterfly”was the most consistently rewarding one I’ve ever witnessed, a cornucopia of radiant singing, powerful conducting, gorgeous theatrical design and gripping new works.

It would have been a knockout under any circumstances. As the crowning stroke of the company’s first century, it feels almost too implausible, like an inspirational sports movie written with a heavy hand.

But there’s no getting around it. I’ve been covering this company since 1985, and in all that time there’s never been a season in which so much ambition has been paired with such a high level of execution.

I mean, let’s go to the videotape. Between last fall and this summer, the company introduced not one but two important new commissioned works to the repertory, John Adams’“Antony and Cleopatra”and Gabriela Lena Frank’s“El último sueño de Frida y Diego.”

The season brought back, after long absences, two 20th century masterpieces with historic ties to the company. It featured a dazzling piece of dance opera, Gluck’s“Orpheus and Eurydice,”with a virtuoso singer-dancer at its heart. It took intriguing new looks at two classics of the Italian repertoire.

And just to make everything feel a little more fallible, the season included one bona fide clunker, last fall’s inert production of Tchaikovsky’s“Eugene Onegin.”There was grumbling at the time, but in hindsight it might have served the same purpose as a deliberate imperfection introduced into a tapestry.

Each of these achievements is worth breaking down individually, just to get a full sense of what the company accomplished.

Two new operas in a single season is rare enough; twosuccessfulnew operas back-to-back is practically unheard of. Yet two composers, one relying on years of experience and the other on the fresh enthusiasm of a first-timer, framed the season with complementary arguments for opera as a thriving and revivified art form.

“Antony and Cleopatra” found Adams, once the iconoclastic young composer who helped reconceive the premises of opera with 1987’s“Nixon in China,”settling into grand old man territory.Some criticsfound the idea of adapting Shakespeare to be a bit stodgy for the 21st century — who are you, Verdi? — but Adams confounded those complaints with a score of powerful eloquence and theatrical resources.

“Frida y Diego,” meanwhile, was an illuminating piece of synesthesia, combining the worlds of music and painting in evocative ways. Both operas took the stage in vivid physical productions that made the best case for their particular virtues.

Happily, the evidence suggests that new operas will only become more important to the company going forward. This season’s two commissions will be followed in2023-24by three, an unprecedented number made possible by an increase in co-commissions and other cooperative ventures. Making new work central to the company’s activities, rather than the occasional attention-getting gamble, is essential to rejuvenating the art form.

The argument often goes that today’s premieres become tomorrow’s standards, and nothing could have made the point more clearly than this season. Francis Poulenc’s“Dialogues of the Carmelites”and Richard Strauss’“Die Frau ohne Schatten”both had their U.S. premieres at the San Francisco Opera, thanks to the efforts of the visionary former general director Kurt Herbert Adler; now here they were again, justifying his prescience.

In both cases, the company’s pride was borne out in magnificent and beautifully cast productions. “Dialogues,” gracefully conducted by Music DirectorEun Sun Kim, found soprano Heidi Stober giving the most incisive of her many memorable performances here in the central role. “Frau” brought back former music director Donald Runnicles, in partnership with a superb cast (sopranos Nina Stemme, Camilla Nylund and Linda Watson, alongside debuting baritone Johan Reuter), to give life to this unwieldy but ravishing fairy tale opera.

And that barely covers half of the joyous experiences that greeted visitors to the War Memorial Opera House over the course of this season. No one who saw and heard it will soon forget the company debut of countertenorJakub Józef Orlińskias Orpheus, putting his break-dancing moves to work while singing with unearthly clarity and tenderness.

Even the more traditional fare was treated splendidly this year. The company went looking for a new legacy production of Verdi’s“La Traviata,”and director Shawna Lucey and designer Robert Innes Hopkins provided a glittering showcase that promises to accommodate countless casts — beginning with soprano Pretty Yende, whose company debut as Violetta was a landmark.

I was admittedly part of a smaller cohort in appreciating director Amon Miyamoto’s production of Puccini’s“Madame Butterfly,”but not even the naysayers could quibble with the vocal luster of soprano Karah Son, tenor Michael Fabiano, baritone Lucas Meachem and mezzo-soprano Hyona Kim in the principal roles.

How much of this will carry over into future years? There’s no telling. Statisticians warn us about a reversion to the mean — the idea that after such a concerted and sustained triumph, there’s nowhere to go, mathematically speaking, but down.

As a perennial optimist, I like to imagine that the thrills of a season like this one will only become more ingrained. Having tasted success, why would anyone go back?

But I also understand the realities of the operatic world. Every production is a gamble, every artist has off nights, and sometimes the gods of the opera house turn against us for no apparent reason.

So if the2023-24 season, which opens Sept. 8, is at a more mundane level, I plan to be disappointed but stoic. I will cling to my memories of the season just past, and appreciate the aptness that saw San Francisco Opera do its very best work during the centennial.

Reach Joshua Kosman:jkosman@sfchronicle.com; Twitter:@JoshuaKosman