Word: merola
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Merola. The man who more than anyone has kept the San Francisco Opera on an even artistic and financial keel is Gaetano Merola, a 63-year-old Neapolitan with a vegetable-wagon accent. Merola arrived in San Francisco in 1921 as one of the batoneers of the barnstorming San Carlo Opera. He promptly lost his shirt and lightened several other people's pock ets producing an outdoor opera season at the Stanford University Stadium...
...fiasco failed to dim either Merola's enthusiasm or his dark-eyed powers of persuasion. In 1923, backed by a $35,000 advance sale and $25,000 from the members of Nob Hill's rich Pacific Union Club, Merola launched his first regular season...
...Francisco society women sewed costumes, donated furniture for props, decorated San Francisco's Civic Auditorium with tree prunings from Golden Gate Park. Merola ended the season with a nervous breakdown...
Nine years later San Franciscans rewarded him with one of the most beautiful and best equipped opera houses in the world. Since then, despite war and economics, the San Francisco Opera has not missed a season. And Merola has assumed the manner of the great impresarios...