When I was a boy, my grandmother would take me the the Hialeah Park Race Track—a.k.a., the “Jewel of Hialeah.” She’d bet on the horses, and I would, too. I’d eat hot dogs and sip on Coke while she hooted and hollered for X or Y horse to cross the finish line. I had no idea what she was doing, but it was fun. I learned quickly that trifectas were always good. I had a knack for helping her pick winners.

Florida Grand Opera.

The “Jewel of Hialeah” closed in 2001, I haven’t bet on horses in a long time, and Hialeah is no longer the prosperous playground for wealthy Cuban exiles who flooded the landscape after the Cuban Revolution. In fact, “The City of Progress” often gets a bad rap, especially from local snobs like me who rarely ever venture west of I-95. Well, all that will change this November. That’s when the Florida Grand Opera (FGO) will launch Opera in Hialeah, a series of Florida Grand Opera concerts and outreach programs for the residents of Hialeah.

“We were both excited and honored to have been approached by the Mayor’s office to be a part of this partnership,” says FGO’s Director of Education Cerise Sutton. “FGO has been active in Hialeah for some time now, and the community has always been incredibly responsive to all that we do. We are looking forward to building upon these efforts throughout the 2014-15 season.”

The Opera in Hialeah festival will bring multilingual performances to the residents of Hialeah, 70 percent of whom are Cuban or Cuban American—the highest concentration in the United States. The festival will include Spanish-language concerts, Read Along, Sing a Song, Random Acts of Opera (“pop-up opera) at Hialeah’s Milander Center for Arts and Entertainment and an Opera Lab, a “laboratory of learning through opera.” The lab will take place at Hialeah High School.

To learn more about the new jewel of Hialeah and to view the schedule for the season, visit www.fgo.org or the City of Hialeah at www.hialeahfl.gov.