Opera in Logan is expanding

The Utah Festival Opera is expanding its scope.

Thanks to a grant from Larry H. and Gail Miller, the organization has acquired the historic Utah Theater located at 18 West Center in Logan.

"This opens up a myriad of possibilities for us to develop programming that we have never heretofore been able to offer, so it's a very exciting juncture for us," said Michael Ballam, general director of the Utah Festival Opera. "It's the threshold of a new day for us."

Ballam said the theater will allow UFO to expand the number of productions offered during its annual summer festival, as well as open up new opportunities during the rest of the year. A restored Mighty Wurlitzer organ will be installed in the theater as well.

"As you have seen at the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, when they added the venue of the Randall Jones Theater to the offerings of the Adams Theater, it expanded geometrically the audience space and the possibilities for productions taking place during the festival," Ballam said. "And that's our life blood, because the majority of our audience is visitors from outside of Cache Valley. The more we have to offer within the series that the festival operates, the more chance it is to draw people from all over the world to come see what it is that we're doing."

The 475-seat Utah Theater, said Ballam, is smaller than the Ellen Eccles Theatre that is presently used for productions. "(The Ellen Eccles Theatre) is a very large space, and acoustically, some works don't lend themselves well to that size auditorium. This smaller venue gives us a chance to perform works that are better suited to that size auditorium."

Specifically, Ballam said that he plans to present some chamber-opera performances during the summer festival season, in tandem with other productions at the Ellen Eccles Theatre. Its location, he said, is on the same block — and in fact, the two theaters' stage doors open into the same alley.

During the rest of the year, Ballam would like to present classic films — such as MGM musicals, opera films and the like. Concerts, recitals, children's-opera festival events and lectures are also planned to be staged in the new venue.

The building, said Ballam, was built in 1924, so it's approximately the same age as the Ellen Eccles Theatre. "The family believes it has always been used as a motion picture hall, but in some of my researching many years ago about the theaters in northern Utah, I have found research to indicate that there were live performances on that stage in its early infancy."

The Utah Festival Opera is currently planning a grand reopening event on April 28.

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