Skip to main content
HomeEventsOpera in the Park - 6 PM - Peninsula Park - FREE

Events - Event View

Opera in the Park - 6 PM - Peninsula Park - FREE

Date and Time

Sunday, July 26, 2026, 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM

Location

Peninsula Park
700 N. Rosa Parks Way
Portland, OR  97217
USA

Category

Public Events

Registration Info

Registration is not Required

About this event

Cruzar la Cara de la Luna – Lyric Opera of Kansas City

OPERA IN THE PARK Portland is proud to present the Oregon premiere of Cruzar La Cara de la Luna (To Cross the Face of The Moon), the world's first mariachi opera. Since its premiere in 2010, this now-beloved work—a potent and inspiring portrait of a specific community and its specific experiences–has become a modern testament to opera's eclectic and far-reaching range. The opera will be performed free to the public (another first for the work), in concert format, with full orchestra, chorus, and seven featured soloists.

Cruzar La Cara de la Luna tells a poignant and timely story of migration, cultural identity, and generational divides within the Mexican American community. The story begins in present-day Texas where an elderly Laurentino Valesquez lies in his bed, on the brink of death. In conversation with his adult son, we learn that Laurentino left a wife and child in Mexico when he immigrated to the USA in search of opportunity. The borders of time and space blur as we meet three generations of the Valesquez family, and come to understand their journeys, physical and spiritual. With a bilingual libretto in Spanish and English, and an incandescent score that artfully fuses traditional opera with mariachi, the seventy-minute work invites audiences to examine their own ideas about home, belonging, and family, and to find the universal in the specific.

MORE INFORMATION: Opera in the Park Performance | Free Opera in Portland