Museo honors Italian roots of S.F. Opera

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The story of the Italian American community in the founding of the San Francisco Opera is front and center in “Bravo — Celebrating San Francisco Opera, Its Italian Roots and Legacy” at the Museo Italo Americano at Fort Mason. As the company celebrates its 2022-2023 centennial season, the life and career of Neapolitan conductor Gaetano Merola, the opera’s first maestro and founder, gets a timely revisit in this original exhibition, co-created with the Museum of Performance and Design.

Prior to the founding of San

Francisco Opera in 1922, the art form already had a strong fan base in the city dating back to the Gold Rush. Not only did Italian immigrant communities bring opera with them as they settled in the Bay Area, but events like soprano Luisa Tetrazzini’s 1910 Christmas Eve concert, a 200,000-person event at Lotta’s Fountain on Market Street, firmly established opera as part of civic life.

Merola arrived in San Francisco in 1906 and famously said: “If destiny wants me not to return to Italy, this is the place to settle down.” Throughout his life, he referred to the city as “my other Italy.”

In addition to archival photographs, the exhibition includes production ephemera, video, audio, and rare silent film footage of Merola and the San Francisco Opera from the 1930s. The stories of the Italian American community are woven throughout the show, including the role of Italian American financiers in the company’s founding. Among the most precious and personal objects of Merola’s in the exhibition is one of the maestro’s conductor batons.

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