First Tlingit opera moves to Thunder Mountain Middle School after lighting failure

A power outage knocked out the stage lighting at Juneau-Douglas High School, and every performance of the first Tlingit opera in recorded history is moving to the Thunder Mountain Middle School auditorium.

The premiere date holds. "Ḵutulagaaw: The Tlingit-Russian Battles" still opens Sept. 11, with performances Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons through Sept. 20, and a free matinee for junior high and high school students Sept. 16.

Existing tickets are being reassigned automatically to equivalent seats at the new venue by Friday, with new assignments sent to the email used for the original purchase. Sales are on hold while the Thunder Mountain seating map is finalized and should resume this week. Buyers can enter an email in the ticket portal to be notified when they reopen.

Alaska News has previously covered the opera itself, when tickets went on sale and the travel and pay-as-you-can programs built around it.

The venue change comes from the producers. The Juneau School District has not said publicly what caused the electrical failure or when the high school auditorium will be repaired.