Opera Memphis’s signature community engagement program 30 Days of Opera returned for its 14th year in September 2025 with a full month of free pop-up performances across the city. Since its launch in 2012, the program has reached nearly 500,000 people through hundreds of performances in almost every Memphis ZIP code, making it one of the longest-running and most ambitious opera outreach programs in the country.
The 2025 opening concert on Thursday, September 12 centered on the music of lost and rarely performed composers of African descent. The evening featured excerpts of Jonestown, an opera by Dr. Evan Williams of Rhodes College performed by Opera Memphis; a featured performance by soprano Carami Hilaire; and a solo set by Marcus King performing Margaret Bonds’s Three Dream Portraits. The opening doubled as a programming statement: 30 Days of Opera is committed to building out the repertoire as much as it is to reaching new audiences.
From there the schedule covered the territory the program has made its own. Opera Memphis performed at the Levitt Shell in Overton Park on September 13 as part of the Orion Free Music Concert Series; at Cazateatro’s annual Latin Fest at Overton Square on September 27; at the Cooper-Young Festival, the Germantown Festival, and the Memphis Pride Festival; and at dozens of other community gatherings, schools, libraries, and businesses across the month.
General Director Ned Canty has framed 30 Days of Opera around a simple proposition since founding it: opera belongs to everyone, and the best way to prove that is to bring it to where people already are. The program’s longevity, the audience numbers, and the breadth of partnerships across the city are the closest thing to a public ledger of that idea working.
Every event is free. Every voice is welcome. Future schedules are published in advance each summer at 30 Days of Opera.
