It told the story of an undocumented Mexican youth living in Texas. Several months ago, the teens helped HGO market a new opera called “Past the Checkpoints” using Facebook and Twitter. Sandra Bernhard, who directs the company’s community engagement program, says her job is to “show up, shut up, listen and show up again.” She recently listened to teens at a Latino neighborhood center tell their “journey stories” - how their families came to America. Since then, more than a dozen other works have been created, all telling the stories of real people and experiences in the city. The effort began six years ago with a production called “The Refuge,” which told stories of refugees from around the world who have settled in Houston. And that’s very much how I view the role of the Houston Grand Opera.” “We absorb each other’s culture and what comes out is something very uniquely American,” Summers says.

But Summers says what his company is doing has less to do with filling seats and much more to do with fully integrating into the community. Thanks to a large influx of immigrants over the past several decades, Houston has become a majority minority city, with 60 percent of its residents of African, Hispanic or Asian descent. Part of the outreach to new communities is a matter of pure demographics. Patrick Summers, HGO’s artistic director, says he sees it as a moral responsibility to “broaden the art and take it to as many people as want to seek it.” It’s also just part of a grand mission by the Houston Grand Opera to engage new audiences by telling their stories.

Written in 2010 and billed as the first mariachi opera, “Cruzar la Cara de la Luna” tells the story of three generations of a Mexican family in the United States. But there’s nothing typical about “Cruzar la Cara de la Luna,” or “To Cross the Face of the Moon.” Just another production at the Houston Grand Opera.

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