Sopranos Lisl Wangermann and Lena Goldstein joined with pianist Ben Beckman to form Park City Opera. Goldstein, who serves as the organization’s executive director, says opera was missing from Park City’s robust art offerings.
“Back in 2020, I was an intern for the Park City Arts Council, and I was working on arts advocacy on behalf of several arts organizations in town,” Goldstein said. “There's such a vibrant culture around attending live music and arts events here and we really felt that opera was missing from that mix.”
Wangermann says her parents are opera fans, and her passion grew from that exposure growing up.
“I think many of us are just at the beginning of our professional career, but with the goal of being professional paid singers, not volunteers, not for fun,” Wangermann said. “People who have studied this, and have dedicated many, many hours and years of their life to this art form.”
Goldstein says they’re starting small this summer and hope to grow from here.
“What we're doing this summer is not representative necessarily of what we hope to do moving forward, which is to put on a full opera production,” Goldstein said. “Part of what we're doing this summer is with these series of performances is just letting locals know that we exist and that we're here with the goal of building an audience for a full production with orchestra in summer 2025.”
Several shows are planned for the next few weeks outdoors and many of them are free. They say the support they’ve received so far form the community has been encouraging and they’re confident, with private donations and grant funding, the organization will continue to grow.
You can find the schedule of events for Park City Opera here.
