[What follows is one of the many merry articles in the Mercury’s Winter Guide 2025. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous this holiday season, support us here.—eds.]
“This building gets us closer to the people,” says Portland Opera artistic director Alfrelynn Roberts. She’s showing off the organization’s new location, occupying three floors in downtown Portland’s World Trade Center complex.
After the 2024 sale of its longtime southeast home base, Portland Opera announced a strategic decision to move across the river in early 2025. Continued activation of downtown Portland is important to Portland Opera, and its new location makes them a nucleus.
“Everything that happens on the waterfront is visible here—the Starlight Parade, the Portland Marathon,” says marketing and communications director Christina Post. “We’re hoping to activate our plaza space during these and other events. Our outdoor opera program, Opera a la Cart, could be set up on the plaza.”
One set plan connects Portland Opera with the upcoming Winter Light Festival, held February 6-14, 2026. An opera singer will kick off each night of the festival, belting from Portland Opera’s new balcony to a crowd in the plaza below. ”So iconic Portland,” Post adds.
Additionally, the organization’s new offices bring opportunities for rental and collaboration. Post describes the music library as “tremendous,” and the space’s sound booths are bookable for private rehearsals and coaching.
Portland Opera still plans to hold its larger performances within the theaters at Portland’5—”different locations mean different audience reach,” Post explains—but the organization’s new 200-seat theater will host niche, interesting works that might draw a smaller crowd. In mid-December, they’re presenting an immersive showing of Opera Parallèle’s Everest, described by the San Francisco company as a “graphic novel opera.”
Projected on the theater’s three walls, Everest unfolds through the voices of talented singers, like mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and tenor Nathan Granner. Opera Parallèle recorded their movements along with their vocals, then illustrator Mark Simmons and cinematographer David Murakami translated those motions into emotive animations.
Roberts and Post describe Portland Opera’s production of Everest as interactive. You’ll want to bring a jacket, because the World Trade Center Theatre will be chilly and scattered with fake snow. With a 50-minute runtime, Everest is also a low-stakes operatic work for the unfamiliar, and appropriate for viewers over 12—”you won’t see anyone fall off a glacier,” Post explained.
That said, it’s a harrowing (and true) story. Composed by Joby Talbot with libretto by Gene Scheer, Everest’s fragmented, flashback-heavy tale follows three mountaineers as they summit Earth’s highest mountain in the spring of 1996, one of its deadliest seasons on record. Only one of the men made it down.
Following two sold-out shows—last season’s The Shining and The Juliet Letters, based on the Elvis Costello album—Portland Opera has seen audiences respond to contemporary takes on the art form. “Surviving in a post-pandemic art world means finding different ways to speak to different people,” Roberts said of Everest’s unorthodox approach. “Ultimately, we want to tell a story that resonates.”
Everest shows at Portland Opera’s World Trade Center Theatre, 121 SW Salmon, Fri Dec 12-Sun Dec 21, $56, tickets at portlandopera.org, 12+.
Lindsay Costello
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