by Robert Ham 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 homebase 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.