Behind the Scenes at Opera in the Park

For more than 20 years, Madison Opera has been performing an astounding feat. In addition to presenting a season of fully staged operas at Overture Center, the company also produces Opera in the Park, a free outdoor summer concert for upwards of 10,000 people. For the spectators it is a fantastic opportunity to picnic on the grass under the stars and enjoy being serenaded by rising stars from the opera world, accompanied by a full orchestra. For the staff at the Madison Opera it is a herculean task. 

“I age a year during that week, due to all the stress,” says Kathryn Smith, general director of Madison Opera. “But when it works and we’ve made that many people happy, everyone believes it’s worthwhile. And it’s part of our reason for being — we’re here to entertain our community.” 

The original impetus for an outdoor opera performance came from extraordinary arts patron Marian Bolz, who was heavily involved in the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Madison Opera and the creation of Overture Center over the course of her life. According to Smith, while Bolz was on vacation one summer, she attended an outdoor concert featuring classical works. Upon returning home, she encouraged then-Madison Opera general manager Ann Stanke to mount a similar event. With the backing of artistic director John DeMain, they committed to the idea for one night only in 2002. The concert’s immediate popularity prompted a second Opera in the Park the next year and since then it has grown each summer.

“It’s a magical night,” says Smith. “We talk about all the work that goes into it. But there is that indefinable alchemy when we put it all together: the park, the people enjoying themselves, picnicking with beautiful music on a beautiful evening.”

“Opera in the Park has a basic shape that’s the same every year because it works,” Smith says. “But for audiences it’s a brand new show each time. The soloists and repertoire are different every year.” 

If possible, Smith books vocalists who will be appearing in the upcoming Madison Opera season, to give audiences a sneak peek of the artist’s work. It’s also a great opportunity to try out performers Smith is interested in featuring in the future and welcome back singers from recent productions. Once she has commitments from the four soloists — ideally sometime in March — she asks for lists of their entire repertoire. 

“I put all that information into spreadsheets; all the arias, full operatic roles, musical theater pieces, party pieces and operettas they know. Then I start cross-referencing to see who I can put together in duets and ensembles to construct a musically interesting show.” Including glimpses of the upcoming season, the program usually encompasses 20 pieces, and always ends with an audience singalong to “It’s A Grand Night for Singing,” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical State Fair. 

“The singers who do it, love it. They’re always a little bit surprised how much fun it is,” Smith says.

Planning for the Opera in the Park event starts nine months before the event. “Usually in November or December, the City of Madison asks about our date, which is a Saturday in late July, on a weekend that doesn’t coincide with Art Fair on the Square,” Smith says.

“But then the real countdown starts the following January,” says Jill Krynicki, the organization’s director of production. As we talk, she consults several spreadsheets filled with annual tasks and deadlines and it becomes clear that Garner Park is not an easy place to have an event of this magnitude. 

“There are so many technical and structural requirements.” Smith notes. “We have to bring everything in.”

Krynicki’s job is to apply for city and parks permits; reserve sound and lighting equipment; order scaffolding to construct the stage; rent forklifts, generators, portable toilets and event tents; and even notify the fire department, so emergency plans for the event can be filed. And that’s before any of the singers have been booked.

“We have so many local companies who we depend on year after year to help make this happen,” says Smith. “We could not produce an event on this scale without them.” Area businesses supply everything from stagehands and catering to shuttle buses and golf carts, to dressing room trailers and walkie-talkies. 

Volunteers are also essential — about 100 help with parking, hand out programs, sell merchandise and raffle tickets, and assist with transportation so audience members and artists get where they need to go quickly and easily — and many come back year after year.

Musically, there’s a lot to do in a short time. Roughly 40 members of the Madison Symphony perform onstage, along with 45 members of the Madison Opera Chorus, including several of the opera’s high school-aged apprentices. To prepare for Opera in the Park, there is one rehearsal with the principals on Thursday, one rehearsal with the full slate of performers on Friday night and then the performance on Saturday. “It’s sort of a glorious insanity during production week,” says Smith.

Smith’s first experience with Opera in the Park came just two weeks after she was hired to be the Madison Opera’s general manager, in 2011. “When I worked with the Metropolitan Opera in New York we did run-out concerts in the summer in all five boroughs, but this had a different feel immediately. It had a lovely Midwest, Madison ethos. Here, when people put their tarps down early to save a space for the concert, sometimes as early as 7 a.m., other people simply leave them there. Then at the end of the night, people pack out their own trash. They clean up after themselves! As an outsider, I found it astonishing.”

The other memory Smith shared of her first Opera in the Park was one of extreme nervousness. “I have massive stage fright,” she confessed. “Honestly, my biggest concern the first year was just living through the experience of speaking in front of 10,000 people. But it was magical.”

This year Opera in the Park will take place on July 22 at 8 p.m. in Garner Park, featuring soprano Katerina Burton, mezzo-soprano Emily Fons, tenor Martin Luther Clark and baritone Weston Hurt. The program will include works written in three languages, over three centuries, from pieces by Handel, Verdi and Puccini to the new opera The Factotum, which premiered in Chicago in 2023. From musical theater, there are selections from Sondheim’s Into the Woods, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, and Bernstein’s Candide. 

They will be performed in their original languages — English, French or Italian — with no supertitles because, according to Smith, there’s no need. “I’ll be introducing the pieces and the characters, to provide a general idea of what’s going on so the intent of each song should actually be very clear.” 

Opera in the Park costs roughly $300,000 to produce. Smith credits their sponsors, “who believe it should happen.”

“It’s amazing that the people of Dane County are able to hear these gifted singers perform such beautiful music for free,” says Smith. “These are some of the same singers who perform all over the world, on stages in New York, Paris and London.”