About
Our Mission
Opera Cultura is a pioneering professional Latinx opera company rooted in San José's East Side, with a national impact. Our mission is to explore the Latinx-Hispanic cultural experience through opera and music theater, and to provide opportunities for our community to participate as creators, learners, and performers. We accomplish this mission in part by supporting and producing the work of composer Héctor Armienta, showcasing music by opera composers of Latino and Hispanic descent, and providing arts education opportunities for young people.
Our History
Since our founding, Opera Cultura has built a body of work that bridges Latinx folklore, history, and lived experience with the operatic tradition. Our productions have included La Llorona, Bless Me, Ultima (based on Rudolfo Anaya's novel), Robert Rodriguez's Frida, and Mi Camino, an animated opera created during the pandemic from interviews with farmworkers in Half Moon Bay and Gilroy. While San José's East Side remains our artistic home, our work has traveled to New York, Washington D.C., and Guadalajara, México, through our Arte Sin Fronteras cultural exchange initiative.
In 2017, with support from Silicon Valley Creates' X Factor grant, we launched the Rap Opera Project, bringing workshops to Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall and MACLA that turned participating youths' own poems, stories, and rap lyrics into a hybrid musical performance.
In recent years, we premiered composer Nicolás Benavides's Tres Minutos alongside a workshop performance of Héctor Armienta's La Muerte, and presented Armienta's Cuentos, a song cycle giving voice to the true stories of immigrants and farmworkers, at the School of Arts and Culture's Mexican Heritage Theater in collaboration with Latine LGBTQ+ theater company Alebrijes. In June 2026, we presented ¡Chicanísima!, composed by Carla Lucero, at MACLA in San José.
Let’s Work Together
Get in touch so we can start working together.
