When it comes to opera companies established and still active in North America, there is the Metropolitan, founded in 1883 … and then the San Francisco Opera.
The genre crossed the Atlantic and took root in New Orleans in the 1790s, making an astonishing appearance in the distant 1850s. And, before these riches, before the creation of the company, between 1851 and the earthquake of 1906, nearly 5,000 opera performances were given in San Francisco in 26 different theaters.Īs impressive as a century is, the longevity of opera far exceeds it, starting with the performances of Jacopo Peri Dafne in Florence in 1598. The season also offered the Il Trittico, at Gounod Romeo and Juliet, and that of Leoncavallo Pagliacci. SF opera performances were heard on the Standard time, a weekly radio show on NBC by the SF Symphony and SF Opera on Sunday nights, for two decades from 1926 This first season in a town of 500,000 inhabitants “on the edge of the prairie”, two decades before the transatlantic commercial flights, featured some of the biggest stars of distant Italy: Beniamino Gigli in Andréa Chenier and Mefistofele Giuseppe De Luca and Giovanni Martinelli in Tosca Queena Mario and De Luca in Rigoletto. “ A scene from the SF Opera production in 1927 Turandot | Credit: SF Opera Archive Merola first visited the city in 1906, was a champion of the genre and the company he founded, and then led until his death – while conducting a concert in Stern Grove – in 1953.Ĭoincidentally, the company was born a month after President Harding died here of a stroke at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco “after his wife read him a flattering article from Saturday evening mail. It was on Septemthat Gaetano Merola, the founder, directed the the beginnings of the company with Bohemian, starring Queena Mario and Giovanni Martinelli, in the Civic Auditorium.
San Francisco Opera will be 100 years old in the rapidly approaching 2022-2023 season.
Tosca in the brand new War Memorial Opera House in 1932 | Credit: SF Opera Archive
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