Park City Opera opens summer season with outdoor concert at Promontory
Park City Opera opened at Promontory Club’s The Shed with a ticketed outdoor concert that mixed opera and musical theater, but access still ran through a private club.
Park City Opera opened its 2026 summer season at Promontory Club’s The Shed with a ticketed outdoor concert that was billed as a community gathering even as it remained inside a private-club venue. The setup put the company’s access pitch and its access limits side by side: guests needed tickets to enter, and the performance took place at Promontory rather than at a public downtown venue.
The company leaned into an informal summer format. Guests were encouraged to bring their own food and beverages, some lawn chairs were available, and attendees were also invited to bring their own seating setups. Artistic Director Lena Goldstein has stressed that the outdoor space offers strong acoustics and a relaxed feel, a contrast to the more formal atmosphere of a traditional opera house.
The program brought together three guest vocalists and a chamber orchestra under Musical Director Benjamin Beckman. The lineup included David Silvano, Rachel Kobernick and Nicole Heinen, performers whose ties to Utah helped anchor the company’s local identity. Repertoire stretched from opera and Golden Age musical theater to American art song, Western-themed selections and original compositions.
The setlist also reached across familiar American works, including material associated with Benjamin Franklin’s quartet repertoire, songs from Carousel, My Fair Lady, West Side Story and Gershwin, along with Beckman’s own compositions. Excerpts from Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land were part of the evening as well, and Park City Opera plans to stage the work in full later in July, making the opener a preview of what is still ahead in the season.
That balance of ticketed prestige and broader access has become part of Park City Opera’s summer strategy in Summit County. After opening at a private club, the company plans to continue with free Opera on the Patio events later in the season, a format that pushes the music beyond Promontory’s gates and into a more public setting. In a town where arts events compete with summer recreation and resort schedules, the company is trying to make opera feel both elevated and reachable, even when the first stop on the calendar begins behind a club entrance.
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