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Gaetano Merola (4 January 1881 – 30 August 1953) was an Italian conductor, pianist and founder of the San Francisco Opera.
Merola was born in Naples, the son of a Neapolitan court violinist and studied piano and conductor at the Naples conservatory. He emigrated to the United States in 1899 and served as an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, Henry Wilson Savage's opera company in Boston, and Fortune Gallo's traveling San Carlo Opera Company. Oscar Hammerstein I hired Merola as choral conductor of his Manhattan Opera Company where Merola remained until the company folded in 1910. He then served as conductor in Hammerstein's London Opera House before returning to New York as an operetta conductor. Merola conducted the premieres of several shows, including Victor Herbert's Naughty Marietta , Rudolf Friml's The Firefly and Sigmund Romberg's Maytime.
It was while touring with the San Carlo Opera that Merola began making annual visits to San Francisco. He first heard Luisa Tetrazzini, a recent arrival to America, at the city's Tivoli Opera House in 1906 and recommended her to Hammerstein. San Francisco had had a long history of opera houses dating back to the Gold Rush. Recognizing the city's potential as a major opera center, by 1921 Merola decided to stay in the Bay Area and launched his first Bay Area opera season in 1922 with a summer season of Carmen , I Pagliacci and Faust at the Stanford University football stadium where over 30,000 attended. Though the Stanford season resulted in a deficit, he pressed on and founded the San Francisco Opera Association the following year, 1923, adapting the Civic Auditorium to his purposes. He recruited some 2,000 individuals and local businesses to become Founders of his opera company. By 1927, he presented the local premieres of Tristan und Isolde and the then-new Turandot , and in the following years, he introduced Falstaff , La Fanciulla del West and Die Meistersinger .
For years, the local citizenry had spoken of building a new opera house. The aftermath of World War I had also kindled a desire to honor the city's war heroes with a veteran's building or art museum. Eventually, those ideas coalesced into a joint project that was to consist of two Palladian-style edifices. One building would house an art museum with veterans rooms while the other would be home to Merola's San Francisco Opera. Two lots across from City Hall were appropriated for the construction, and a bond issue was approved by the voters in 1927. By October 1931, when the twin cornerstones were laid, the stock market crash and ensuing Depression had significantly reduced the construction costs, and the two buildings were completed within the year for US$5.5 million.
The War Memorial Opera House opened on October 15, 1932 with an inaugural production of Tosca starring Claudia Muzio and Dino Borgioli (a primitive recording of Act 1 has survived, and is included in the Romophone Muzio series), followed a few days later by a charming 27-year-old Lily Pons in Lucia di Lammermoor . With a new house, Merola's company grew rapidly in its first decade, producing its first Richard Wagner Ring Cycle in 1935 starring Kirsten Flagstad (in her first complete Ring anywhere) and Lauritz Melchior, and introducing conductors Fritz Reiner in 1936 and Erich Leinsdorf in 1938.
Part of Merola's southern strategy was to augment his company's home season with run-out performances at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. He had been a partner in the formation of Los Angeles Grand Opera, which had a successful run from 1924 to 1931. With the opening of the War Memorial in October 1932, Merola entered into a business agreement with the Los Angeles arts impresario L.E. Behymer to present stars of the San Francisco Opera in an abbreviated season of locally produced operas. So it was that L.A. audiences heard Muzio and Borgioli in La traviata and Il trovatore and Pons in Lucia and Rigoletto just days before their War Memorial debuts. Other notable productions included The Bartered Bride with Elisabeth Rethberg and an immense Le Coq d'Or in 1934. In 1937, Merola shed all pretense of a Los Angeles company and formally established a long-running series of annual visits by the San Francisco Opera Association to the Shrine Auditorium. That first season included Lauritz Melchior and Kirsten Flagstad in Tristan und Isolde conducted by Fritz Reiner, Melchior in Lohengrin , Pons and Ezio Pinza in Lakmé , Gina Cigna and Giovanni Martinelli in Aida and Maria Jeritza in Tosca . The result was an unbroken string of yearly Los Angeles performances through 1965.
In 1943, Merola brought Kurt Herbert Adler to San Francisco to serve initially as chorus master; in time, he would take on additional duties as conductor, choral director and chief deputy. Adler had been Toscanini's assistant at Salzburg in 1936 and had arrived in the United States in 1938. Merola also continued to attract important new singers - often before they'd performed in other major American opera houses. Notable singers he introduced after the Second World War included Tito Gobbi, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Elena Nikolaidi, Renata Tebaldi and Mario del Monaco. In addition, he spotted and utilized West Coast talents, including lyric soprano Dorothy Warenskjold, who he discovered while conducting a Standard Hour radio broadcast at the California State Fair in Sacramento. [1]
As his health and energy declined over the next decade, Merola turned over more and more of his duties to Adler, though he remained at the helm of the company until his death in 1953 - an impressive stewardship of 30 years.
He died while conducting an excerpt from Puccini's Madama Butterfly during a concert at Sigmund Stern Grove, an outdoor amphitheatre in western San Francisco where free summer concerts have been given since 1938.
Upon succeeding Merola as general director, Kurt Herbert Adler established the San Francisco Opera's training program for gifted singers and directors during the 1954–55 season. In 1957, the program was officially named the Merola Opera Program in honor of the company's founder and longtime general director, Gaetano Merola. The Merola Opera Program provides intensive training, coaching and master classes for eleven weeks every summer with established professionals in the various operatic fields, and its many graduates have gone on to important careers in opera.
Lauritz Melchior was a Danish-American opera singer. He was the preeminent Wagnerian heldentenor of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s and has come to be considered the quintessence of his voice type. Late in his career, Melchior appeared in movie musicals and on radio and television. He also made numerous recordings.
The San Francisco Opera (SFO) is an American opera company founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola (1881–1953) based in San Francisco, California.
Helen Francesca Traubel was an American opera and concert singer. A dramatic soprano, she was best known for her Wagnerian roles, especially those of Brünnhilde and Isolde.
Kirsten Malfrid Flagstad was a Norwegian opera singer, who was the outstanding Wagnerian soprano of her era. Her triumphant debut in New York on 2 February 1935 is one of the legends of opera. Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the longstanding General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera said, “I have given America two great gifts — Caruso and Flagstad.”
Jane Eaglen is an English dramatic soprano particularly known for her interpretations of the works of Richard Wagner and the title roles in Bellini's Norma and Puccini's Turandot. Her career at the Metropolitan Opera started with her Brunhilde in the Ring Cycle. Eaglen has performed at all major houses globally such as La Scalla, the Metropolitan Opera House and many others. She currently resides in Boston, MA as a voice teacher at the famous New England Conservatory where she is training the next generation of world class singers. She is the President and founder of the Boston Wagner Society. Eaglen spends her summers instructing at the prestigious Merola opera training program for emerging artists. She is very active in her community. Every year she judges several voice competitions including the Laffont-Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.
Kurt Herbert Adler was an Austrian–American conductor and opera house director.
The War Memorial Opera House is an opera house in San Francisco, California, located on the western side of Van Ness Avenue across from the west side/rear facade of the San Francisco City Hall.
Viorica Ursuleac was a Romanian operatic dramatic soprano.
Ludwig Suthaus was a German operatic heldentenor.
Florence Easton was an English dramatic soprano of the early 20th century. She was one of the most versatile singers of all time, appearing in more than 100 roles, covering a wide range of styles and periods, from Mozart, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Strauss, Schreker and Krenek. She sang virtually every Wagnerian soprano part, large and small, from Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer onwards, including Brünnhilde in Götterdämmerung.
Blanche Thebom was an American operatic mezzo-soprano, voice teacher, and opera director. She was part of the first wave of American opera singers that had highly successful international careers. In her own country she had a long association with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City which lasted 22 years. Opera News stated, "An ambitious beauty with a velvety, even-grained dramatic mezzo, Thebom was a natural for opera: she commanded the stage with the elegantly disciplined hauteur of an old-school diva, relishing the opportunity to play femmes du monde such as Marina in Boris Godunov, Herodias and Dalila."
Edwin McArthur was an American classical music conductor, pianist and accompanist. From 1935 until his retirement in 1955, he was the usual accompanist of the Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad.
The San Francisco Opera Center (SFOC) is the San Francisco Opera's professional training center for opera singers. Based in San Francisco, it encompasses two different professional tracks for training: a summer training program known as the Merola Opera Program and a two year long term resident artist program known as the Adler Fellowship. For twenty years the SFOC also operated a touring opera company, the Western Opera Theatre, but for financial reasons this touring company was disbanded in 2003. In addition to providing training for opera singers, the Merola Opera Program also provides training for vocal coaches and stage directors. Four singers each year from the summer Merola Opera Program are offered Adler Fellowships with the San Francisco Opera. Soprano Sheri Greenawald served as director of the San Francisco Opera Center from 2002 through 2020.
This is an audio and video discography of Tristan und Isolde, an opera by Richard Wagner which was first performed on 10 June 1865 in Munich.
Karin Branzell was a Swedish operatic contralto, who had a prominent career at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, and in Europe. Her very wide range enabled her to sing both contralto roles and the occasional soprano role. She was particularly noted for her singing of the music of Richard Wagner, in roles such as Ortrud (Lohengrin), Venus (Tannhäuser), Erda, Brangäne, and Brunnhilde. She was considered on a par with Margarete Klose and Kerstin Thorborg as a Wagnerian contralto. Amneris (Aida), Dalila, Herodias (Salome), and Clytemnestra (Elektra) were among her other renowned roles.
Dorothy Lorayne Warenskjold was an American lyric soprano who had an active career in opera, concerts, radio, television, and recitals from the mid-1940s through the early 1970s. She made several recordings for Capitol Records; other recordings were later released from restored material. She was fully California born, trained, and resident, in an era when the ranks of classical singers were dominated by Europe or New York. In addition to critical acclaim for her impeccable operatic performances, she achieved several decades of wide affection from cultured listeners across non-Metropolitan North America, for her combination of radiotelevison and touring recitals. However, her early success was followed by later forgottenness. Former Chicago Symphony President Henry Fogel wrote, "Warenskjold was a fine lyric soprano who deserved a bigger career than she had."
Patrick Summers is an American conductor best known for his work with Houston Grand Opera (HGO), where he has been the artistic and music director since 2011, and with San Francisco Opera, where he served as principal guest conductor, 1999–2016.
Hans Clemens was a German tenor who had an international career in opera and concert from the 1910s through the 1930s. He performed with several major opera houses, including the Städtische Oper in Berlin and the Metropolitan Opera. He is particularly remembered for his performances and recordings of Wagner's David in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Mime in Der Ring des Nibelungen. After retiring from the stage, he worked as a voice teacher in Los Angeles.
Alfredo Gandolfi, sometimes given as Alfred Gandolfi, was an Italian-born American cinematographer, operatic baritone, and librettist. He should not be confused with the Alfredo Gandolfi who co-founded Ambrosio Film with Arturo Ambrosio in 1906.
Irene Jessner was an Austrian-born American soprano and music educator. She began her opera career in Europe in 1930. From 1936 to 1952 she was a principal soprano at the Metropolitan Opera. She became a naturalized American citizen in 1938. While she was particularly associated with the operas of Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner, her repertoire also encompassed works from the Italian and French opera literature. Her most celebrated roles were Chrysthomenis in Elektra, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, and Sieglinde in Die Walküre; all parts which she recorded and which she performed both at the Metropolitan Opera and as a guest artist with other organizations. She was a celebrated voice teacher at the University of Toronto from 1952 until her retirement in 1986. She also taught on the faculty of The Royal Conservatory of Music in the 1950s. Several of her pupils had successful careers, including Teresa Stratas. Canadian musicologist Carl Morey described her as "one of the few truly outstanding voice teachers in Canada.”
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