Tulsa Opera: The Sound of Music
VanTrease Performing Arts Center for Education
November 15, 2025
While I’m an avid theatre-goer, opera remains a blind spot in my performing arts knowledge. To date, I’ve been to a total of two, including Tulsa Opera’s The Sound of Music, staged at the VanTrease Performing Arts Center for Education this past Saturday in a one-night-only engagement.
Tulsans go hard for opera. As I waded through the crowd outside and into the lobby, people were brimming with excitement. Inside the theater, I watched as adults found their friends in the audience and met them with wide grins. Kids of all ages, dressed to the nines (or in one case, a Captain von Trapp costume), ran around the aisles and climbed up onto the ledge of the stage to look down into the orchestra pit. The buzzing enthusiasm sustained throughout the whole performance, just as in the last Tulsa Opera production I went to.
When you think of opera, you probably don’t immediately think of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s final collaboration, a musical that retells the true story of the von Trapp family and their escape from the Nazis in 1930s Austria. I know the songs well and wouldn’t consider them operatic, but Tulsa Opera found ways to pepper that style into a stripped down performance.
One decision toward that end was to invite Leona Mitchell, an Enid native who spent 18 seasons as the leading soprano at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, to play Mother Abbess. While Mitchell struggled with some of the mid-range notes in “Climb Ev’ry Mountain”—I imagine it’s hard to switch from opera to musical theatre technique—she did sing beautifully and boldly when she had space to let a note ring. She also brought natural warmth to the stage. Her first scene with Jenn Gambatese (Maria), which included the song “My Favorite Things,” overflowed with joy.