Portland Opera presents “Beatrice”

Portland Opera will present “Beatrice” at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 17 and at 2 p.m. Sept. 18 at the Hampton Opera Center, 211 S.E. Caruthers St., Portland. Tickets are $35 general admission or $10 for students, available at portlandopera.org/performances-tickets/22-23-season/portland-opera-to-go-beatrice/.

The year is 1912, and young Beatrice Morrow is a talented scholar and opera singer who has always longed to perform. She meets and falls in love with Edward Cannady, a community leader who urges Beatrice to take on a new role with The Advocate—the first African American newspaper in Oregon. Beatrice shares her expertise and her voice as a civil rights leader, community organizer and editor as she builds bridges and blazes trails in local history.

Commissioned for our Portland Opera to Go Program, Beatrice is a 50-minute youth opera inspired by the life and story of Beatrice Morrow Cannady, a prominent leader in Oregon’s cultural community and civil rights movement of the early 1900s. The piece has been written for middle school audiences, focused on fourth through ninth grades.