Nancy Preis News Today

"I always look for something to tie the season together. Enchantment was easy this year," says Nancy Preis, general director of Opera in the Ozarks. Tickets for the 2024 season, "Enchanted Evenings," go on sale April 1 with four featured operas, including a double-bill of one-acts.

"If you have watched any TV or gone to a movie in the last 100 years, you have heard opera," Nancy Preis begins her sales pitch. "Opera music has been used in countless commercials, TV shows and movies and will be very familiar to you even if you have never heard a whole opera.

The amount of the gift was stunning for a town as small as Eureka Springs: $34 million. Thats what the Walton Family Foundation is giving to fund a facility for Opera in the Ozarks at Inspiration Point, an institution that has been around for more than seven decades.

Hope Cancer

Nancy Preis says shes still a little overwhelmed when she realizes Opera in the Ozarks is getting its biggest wish granted. Thanks to the Walton Family Foundation, the Eureka Springs opera company will get $34 million to design and construct a new theater.

Hope Cancer

Nancy Preis says shes still a little overwhelmed when she realizes Opera in the Ozarks is getting its biggest wish granted. Thanks to the Walton Family Foundation, the Eureka Springs opera company will get $34 million to design and construct a new theater.

The grant will fund a new 300-seat theater as well as cabins for faculty housing.

"When people say they don't like opera, I always ask, 'which one?'" laughs Nancy Preis, general director of Eureka Springs' venerable Opera in the Ozarks. "There's 400 years of opera to choose from, and there is something for everyone. Opera plots deal with human emotions -- something we can all relate to regardless of the time period of the story or the physical setting. The story might be about the Greeks, but the emotions in the plot are still with us, ...

Becca Martin Brown talks with Nancy Preis, general director of Opera in the Ozarks, and Opera Singer Autumn Schacherl about this session of operas being performed at Opera in the Ozarks.