Portland Opera’s 60th season finds the eminent arts institution at a fulcrum. In recent months, it sold the Hampton Opera Center, the organization’s home base for over two decades, and now it’s deeply embroiled in ongoing discussions about the future of the Keller Auditorium. It’s little wonder then that the company has kept its impressive anniversary season relatively modest, only mounting two full-scale operas: Verdi’s repertory mainstay Falstaff, and The Shining, a new work based on Stephen King’s 1977 novel. And both of those won’t open until spring 2025.

What may help the Portland Opera weather this blustery period are the roots it laid years ago, with its efforts to foster new talent and engage with people that may have never experienced opera before. And to do that, the company is looking outside typical performance venues and into school auditoriums, gymnasiums, and community centers across the state.

In 2022, the organization introduced Our Oregon: a series of commissioned operas aimed at young audiences that tell the stories of important Oregonians from historically marginalized communities. That year, the Portland Opera staged Beatrice, a short work based on the life of Beatrice Morrow Cannady, the first Black woman to practice law in Oregon who also helped found the state’s chapter of the NAACP. 

This fall, the project continues with the premiere of Shizue: An American Story, a 50-minute opera that tells the tale of Shizue Iwatsuki, a poet and fierce advocate for Oregon’s Japanese-American community, who spent nearly four years incarcerated at concentration camps in California during World War II. Although her poetry does appear at the Japanese American Historical Plaza, Iwatsuki’s name isn’t well-known beyond scholars of her work. 

“I want to say that’s the basis of every woman’s story in history,” says Dmae Lo Roberts, the playwright and journalist commissioned to write the libretto for, and direct, the upcoming performances of Shizue. “When you start uncovering it, they were pretty fantastic! Why haven’t we learned about this person before? I felt excited that young people might be learning about her history through opera.”

The biggest challenge for Roberts and her collaborator, composer Kenji Oh, was working out how to condense Iwatsuki’s life into a musical work that runs less than an hour. The pair hit on a novel conceit: Two actors will play the main character concurrently, Lindsey Nakatani as a younger Iwatsuki and Chihiro Asano as an older, looking back and commenting on her life. The music Oh conceived for this work follows a similar line, maintaining a modern tone while weaving in melodies from traditional Japanese folk songs. 

Iwatsuki’s story is absolutely ripe for an operatic retelling. Born in Okayama in 1897, she was raised in a life of refinement before marrying Kamegoro Iwatsuki and following him to Hood River where he was an apple farmer. Even as she raised the couple’s three children and helped oversee the farm, Iwatsuki helped her fellow Japanese emigres learn American customs. And, says Roberts, she continued her studies of poetry, in particular the form known as tanka, and flower arranging, even during her internment. 

“She had to use whatever was around her,” Roberts says. “There were no flowers to use. Her grandson showed us a flower arrangement she made in the camp with pipe cleaners and yarn with hay underneath for the soul. It’s the sweetest, most beautiful thing when you know the history. You could put her behind barb wire, but you can’t take her art away from her.”

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The world premiere of Shizue: An American Story takes place at Brunish Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, Fri Oct 4, 7 pm & Sat Oct 5, 1 pm, $5+ pay what you will, all ages. After the Portland premiere, Portland Opera to Go carries it to schools and community centers across the state.