... as we have since San Francisco Opera Music Director Nicola Luisotti left the same position with Naples' 277-year-old opera house: The beautiful house, the oldest continuously active venue for public opera in Europe, opening decades before both Milan's La Scala and Venice's La Fenice, was damaged in World War II, but following the liberation of Naples in October 1943, members of the occupying military organized reconstruction, and just two months later, La bohème was performed.
In preparation for last year's joint performance of the Verdi Requiem by the two companies in the War Memorial, some suprising historical facts came up:
Teatro di San Carlo and the San Francisco Opera share an important common connection. The founding director of the San Francisco Opera, Gaetano Merola, was born in Naples, trained at the Naples Conservatory of Music, and was the son of a violinist at the Court of the King of Naples.
In 1918 or 1919, Gaetano Merola was playing poker in North Beach with nine of his Italian friends, including Giuseppe Brucia, a successful businessman and philanthropist, when one of them asked: If San Franciscans liked opera so much, why didn’t the city have its own opera company?
They all agreed it was a great idea, and pledged to back and finance Merola in establishing a San Francisco opera company. Giuseppe Brucia gave the seed capital with further financing from A.P. Giannini and the Bank of Italy (now Bank of America). On June 3, 1922, Gaetano Merola opened the new San Francisco Opera Company in the Stanford Football Stadium with three operas — Pagliacci, Carmen, and Faust.