Opera Warhorses

During the first 30 years of history of the San Francisco Opera, Italian-born Gaetano Merola was at the opera’s helm. Although artists representing many nationalities performed during the Merola years, the list of great Italian artists who appeared at San Francisco Opera for multiple seasons - Giovanni Martinelli, Tito Schipa, Giuseppe De Luca, Claudia Muzio, [...]

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This website has reviewed several live operatic performances over the past two years that I believe are worthy of the attention of the wider community of opera aficionados. Some I have characterized as “world class”, suggesting that it would have been worth the effort for an opera aficionado to have gone to some considerable trouble [...]

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In recent decades, the San Francisco Opera has organized its performance schedules to present seven or eight operas as a “Fall Season” from September to December (and occasionally January) and another three operas in repertory as a “Summer Season” centered in June. Although originally the Summer and Fall seasons were administratively separated (you could subscribe [...]

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