With none of the customary fanfare for an operatic finale, City Opera and the San Francisco Opera have brought down the curtain on their transcontinental legal battle, ending a yearlong dispute over the ownership of set and costume designs.

The truce was disclosed in a two page stipulation filed last month in federal court in Oakland, Calif. “Yes, indeed there is a settlement, but as part of the agreement we’re not at liberty to discuss it,” said a spokeswoman for City Opera, Susan Woelzl.

An attorney for the San Francisco Opera did not respond to messages seeking comment yesterday.

The dispute dates to last September, when the San Francisco Opera mounted a production of “Mother of Us All,” a rarely staged opera depicting Susan B. Anthony’s crusade for women’s suffrage. The opera features a libretto by Gertrude Stein and music by Virgil Thomson.

City Opera, which staged “Mother” in 2000, had accused the San Francisco company of stealing set and costume designs for the opera. A testy exchange of letters ensued between the two opera companies. Last November, San Francisco Opera filed suit in federal court in its hometown seeking a legal ruling upholding its rights to the set and costume designs.

City Opera officials said they were taken aback by the move, but legal experts said the pre-emptive tactic was a common one aimed at heading off litigation in New York that would have been more costly for the San Francisco company. The lawsuit was first reported in The New York Sun.

The legal fracas hinged on a host of thorny issues in intellectual property law. The San Francisco opera hired set and costume designers who had worked on the earlier productions. City Opera contended that the artists had agreed not to reproduce the designs for other companies; the designers and the San Francisco company countered that the costumes and sets for the new production were entirely original.

Critics, however, said the sets were similar and a description on the San Francisco Opera’s Web site suggested that its production was connected with the earlier ones in New York. In addition, the San Francisco Opera at one stage had discussed renting sets or costumes from City Opera, but no deal was ever reached.

While the legal issues were complex, many in the industry said that the disagreement should not have become a federal case. For one thing, the San Francisco company staged the opera on only six occasions. Reviews were mediocre.

The man who designed the sets at the core of the dispute, Allen Moyer, said the rush to court stemmed from “bad blood” between individuals at the two opera companies.

“It’s sort of like a war,” he told the Sun last December.

The lawsuit was assigned to a federal judge in Oakland, Claudia Wilken. In May, she referred the case to an outside lawyer as part of an effort to encourage an out-of-court settlement. The San Francisco-based lawyer for City Opera, Owen Seitel, however, said the two sides ended up sorting the matter out on their own.

“We actually settled the case amongst ourselves without needing the assistance of any third parties,” he said.