Fall 2025 Issue

The state of Utah is unique for many reasons: the Great Salt Lake, Sundance Film Festival, iconic national parks and monuments, and the Bonneville Salt Flats. In music education, it is also home to an organization “distinguished among its peers nationwide for its broad and significant impact throughout the entire state of Utah.” This is the Utah Symphony | Utah Opera, which has been a leader in orchestral and opera education and community engagement for over half a century. In a recent interview with Benjamin Kipp, the Vice President of Education and Community Development, I set out to learn more. 

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What became clear immediately is that educational work at USUO is intentional and central, not an afterthought. As Ben succinctly put it, education in his organization is not “window dressing” created primarily for the purpose of gaining 501(c)3 status and its benefits. Instead, at USUO, education and community are the main drivers of the organization’s mission. This commitment is present in its history, steering its programming from the beginning (nearly 50 years for opera and over 80 for the symphony orchestra). It is also made palpable in structural ways. For example, every department head, including education, has a seat at the senior leadership table. It is reflected in the enthusiasm with which its programming is received by the wide public it serves. As Ben enthusiastically told me, "Utahn’s turn out for this stuff!”

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I went into the interview intent on learning about USUO’s flagship “Opera in the Schools” program. Its mission is to educate K-12 Utah students about the art of opera, showing them that it can be “moving, thrilling, and fun,” and to bring opera programming to every one of Utah’s 40 school districts on a three-year rotation. According to the most recently published Utah Opera Education Report, they are succeeding admirably, having given 146 assembly-style performances across 26 districts in the 2023-2024 school year, serving 41,372 students and 2,192 teachers at 130 schools. 

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The “Opera in the Schools” program is only one of the 28 educational and community engagement programs currently curated by the organization! USUO’s programs serve 130,000 students annually through a vast and varied array of projects offered in-house, the community, and the schools. The orchestra does 55 educational performances a year, which includes traveling to schools across the state to give symphony concerts, hosting “Instrument Zoos,” working with student musicians side by side, and inviting students to attend open orchestra rehearsals. For opera, secondary students are given “Opera-tunities” to attend final opera dress rehearsals, which are facilitated by USUO’s welcoming staff and enhanced by hands-on learning stations in the opera house lobby. Students of all ages can visit the opera company’s production studio to see how costumes, props, and sets are created. USUO even hires a collaborative composer for its “Music! Words! Opera!” program and facilitates a summer opera creation training camp for teachers, so that elementary school students across Utah can create their own in-classroom operas. 

 

This brings me to the “Opera in the Schools” program, which has a three-year waiting list. Yes, you heard that correctly. Three years.

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“People want it in their schools,” explained Ben. For Utah Opera, this program is an ideal opportunity to embody its educational mission on multiple levels, inspiring interest in opera, building community, and impacting individual lives through meaningful arts experiences. This is best expressed through the “mantra” of Ben’s department, which is to “spark curiosity, foster belonging, [and] make memories.” They have it posted on the wall, because it matters how these priorities show up in their work. “If we can get people to feel curious and to feel like they're connected with one another, we inherently crystallize that moment, this memory that they made with us. So even though I would love for every person that comes through our doors to keep coming, I think the biggest thing for me is if we're cultivating compassionate arts advocates and whether we're turning them to look into what their unique community offers. Because people want and need this [community]. They may not be able to dictate that or communicate that, but that's our biggest purpose.”

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For elementary ages, “Opera in the Schools” speaks to this purpose in the form of an educational and participatory game show called “Who Wants to be an Opera Star?” Four UO Resident Artists and a collaborative pianist present a 45-minute scripted performance that introduces opera to an assembly of students, followed by an open Q&A session. For grades 7-12, the Resident Artists present a 45-minute program called “Freeze Frame: Elixir of Love,” which is a shortened, English-language version of Gaetano Donizetti’s opera set in a modern-day rural town. This offering gives older students an opportunity to be audience members for a longer operatic experience, but also “freezes” five times to define musical concepts and educate them on storytelling devices. For high school choirs, UO offers a companion program called “Opera Up Close” in which the Resident Artists perform operatic repertoire, demonstrate different voice types and styles, speak about their own singing experiences, and highlight the collaborative nature of putting together an opera. Both secondary “Opera in the Schools” programs allow time for open Q&A sessions, so that older students have an opportunity to satisfy their curiosity. 

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I asked Ben to elaborate on the most important strategies for connecting with younger audiences and how he can tell if students are interested and learning. For him, it was about being aware of the details – the little things that make it easier to engage kids’ attention and make them feel comfortable. Referring to everyone in the audience as “friend,” for example, is a simple way to address students equally and simultaneously join people together in the performance experience. Having Resident Artists each wear a shirt of a different primary color appeals to children’s visual senses and allows students to refer to shirt color, instead of physical characteristics like skin color or gender when they are addressing the Resident Artists. Introducing opera to students without making comparisons to other vocal art forms is important, so that opera is not seen as “something you will have to suffer through.” USUO seeks also to make the experience fun and approachable by working to relax the uppity “audience etiquette” rules that can cause people to feel less welcome or not able to see themselves in the operatic space. This includes understanding that when students are in conversation with each other about the show, they are not necessarily being disrespectful. They are often simply excited, engaged, and learning. 

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USUO is doing what many of us in youth performing arts would like to see in our own localities and schools, yet most of us don't see people in our own communities beating down our doors to learn about opera (quite the opposite). Curious, I asked Ben for his thoughts. First, how was a need and a desire created in Utah for this kind of educational programming? Second, what advice would he give to opera education advocates in other parts of the country who may want to emulate what USUO is doing? 

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He responded, “I think it's realizing that very few people are going to come to you asking for opera. Like, ‘come to an opera, it's a three-hour show in a different language’. These are inherent barriers. And I think for a long time, the industry has been focused on refuting those barriers or trying to make them seem more like speed bumps. And when you're entrenched in it, you don't realize how 'inside of baseball' so much of this stuff is. So, it's about finding the balance of how to still keep the respect and the integrity of what opera is, but also make it feel approachable. It needs to be a low ask. Yes, it's beautiful art. Yes, it's this historical thing that connects us to our roots. Yes, it's wonderful stories that get played out in these incredible ways with athleticism and artists. I mean, yes, all that stuff. But none of that lands for the lay person. So, it’s about finding ways for people to really engage with the art form in a way that they can explore.”

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Ben’s advice for those of us who might want to try something like “Opera in the Schools” in our own areas was to “first, understand your unique place and the needs of your community and where those things overlap. You may want to meet every need, but sometimes you just can't. Sometimes you end up spending a lot of time doing the thing you just are not supposed to do.”

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“Second, find more ways to really, really, really listen to whatever the community is. People in the industry do not listen enough. We act interested, but we don't necessarily walk the walk and that means being open to the thing that you might not want to hear.”

 

I would add a third piece of advice inspired by a phrase that Ben reports he says too much in his conversations with the USUO team. No matter what we are trying to accomplish in educating kids about opera or with engaging communities in opera experiences, no matter the financial bottom line, no matter whether we succeed or fail in the programming we offer, it’s important that we always stay process-focused. To look at the qualitative impact in the communities we are serving and to reflect routinely on whether we are listening to and meeting their actual needs – to change what we are doing if necessary and learn from every experience and performance about what works and what could be improved. Ben calls this “Purpose over Product.” For me, I ask myself, what kind of community, what kind of world am I endeavoring to build in the performing arts work I am doing? From what I can tell, this is the intentional mindset of the USUO Department of Education and Community Engagement. Their long track record of successes in both orchestral and opera education speaks for itself in validating exactly this kind of approach and setting an example for the rest of us to follow.

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Editor's Note: Don't forget to peruse YPO's new database for information on operas for young audiences.