Opera Laguna

A ‘Festival of Opera’ for Orange County was founded in 1961. The idea began at a dinner party and amazingly, managed to have a full season within the year. The first performances began August 1962, in the Festival Bowl (Irvine Bowl) starting with a production of Bizet’s Carmen . Laguna had 10 years of grand opera before evolving into Opera Pacific and moving to the Orange County Performing Arts Center where it eventually closed in 2008. Unfortunately for our town, grand opera never really returned to Laguna after that, with the exception of a few stand alone community concerts.