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Opera in the Park is about to double up.
The organization behind the popular free summer opera show has announced it will expand in summer 2026 to two locations: Shute Park in Hillsboro and then back to Peninsula Park in North Portland as usual.
The opera on offer this summer will be Cruzar la Cara de la Luna (To Cross the Face of the Moon), the world’s first mariachi opera. It’s a bilingual concert opera about migration and cultural identity within the Mexican American experience. This will mark the Oregon premiere of Cruzar and the first time the 2010 opera has ever been offered free and open to the public anywhere.
“We’re really excited to be able to present this to a whole new community,” says Ashley Clark, executive director of Opera in the Park Portland.
Last summer, about 7,000 Portlanders packed Peninsula Park for a free, outdoor performance of Carmen.
This summer’s concerts will be held July 24 in Hillsboro and July 26 in Portland. Opera in the Park has been a Portland tradition since 2003. It the only organization in the Pacific Northwest that offers opera concerts in a large-scale, open-air format free to the public. The expansion is supported, in part, by a $30,000 grant from the Oregon Cultural Trust.
The expansion news comes on the heels of Opera in the Park Portland hiring Nicholas Fox as its artistic director. He began Dec. 1 after holding the position on an interim basis for a year. Fox conducted La Traviata in 2024 and Carmen in 2025 and also serves as associate music director at Portland Opera.
“It’s the first time we’ve had an artistic director since our co-founders, so this is a big step forward for us.”
