Since 1978, Utah Opera has cultivated and entertained a growing audience of over 150,000 annually around the intermountain area. They produce opera with artistic standards of distinction and with a fresh vibrancy – new works for the area as well as the classics.

Commitment to the contemporary vitality of opera has focused the Opera’s energy into projects which animate the art form for non-traditional audiences, and broaden its conventional horizon for dedicated opera-goers. Their achievements on the modern operatic scene include the 1996 world premiere of Dreamkeepers, a major new operatic work hailed as “an incontrovertible success story” by Rodney Milnes in The Times of London (January 24, 1996), and shadow-interpreted mainstage and school productions for both hearing and hearing-impaired audiences.

Utah Opera strives to live up to its name in serving all the people of Utah, regardless of age and geographic location. Each year, the Opera performs for over 80,000 students in Salt Lake City’s Capitol Theatre, and in schools throughout Utah. This amounts to approximately 10 percent of all school opera audiences nationwide, according to annual surveys by OPERA America. Not only are these young people developing a greater appreciation of opera, but they will also ensure Utah Opera’s audience base in the years to come.

Young people and adults alike enjoy opera more when they understand the lyrics. In 1985, Utah Opera became the youngest company in the nation to implement the innovative technique of Supertitles – the English translation of the sung language projected above the stage.