San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera (SFO) is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.

It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola (1881–1953) and is the second largest opera company in North America. The Opening Night Gala of San Francisco Opera is considered to be one of the most prominent events in the musical and social life of San Francisco.

Read more about San Francisco Opera:  Significant U.S. Debuts At The SFO

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    San Francisco is where gay fantasies come true, and the problem the city presents is whether, after all, we wanted these particular dreams to be fulfilled—or would we have preferred others? Did we know what price these dreams would exact? Did we anticipate the ways in which, vivid and continuous, they would unsuit us for the business of daily life? Or should our notion of daily life itself be transformed?
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    If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.
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