Word: merola
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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...
George W. Stinson, 35. weighing 200 handsome pounds, was brought up in a St. Louis orphanage, became a San Francisco motorcycle policeman in 1926. In 1930 Mine Ernestine Schumann-Heink admired his tenor voice. Four years later San Francisco Opera Director Gaetano Merola took Officer Stinson under his wing, called him a potential Caruso. Sympathetic professionals, including Singers Giovanni Martinelli, Gina Cigna, Kirsten Flagstad, pitched in to send Officer Stinson abroad to study. This week Officer George Stinson, on leave of absence from the California Highway Patrol, sails, with his wife and 16-year-old stepson, for Italy. Said...
...part of its War Memorial program, San Francisco proudly opened the first U. S. civic opera house, equipped even to private quarters for the stage animals. Merola's formula remained the same as at the old Auditorium. He kept the seasons short, used the local symphony orchestra and local choristers, sold out his performances with Big Names. The local backlog became stronger with the foundation of a ballet school with able Adolph Bolm, oldtime Diaghilev dancer, in charge. Last year, spending some $40,000 on scenery alone, the San Francisco Opera produced Wagner's Ring cycle, headed...
Choosing performers shrewdly, presenting many of them (e. g., Jeritza, Lily Pons, Flagstad) when they were hot spot-news has done much to keep up Merola's prestige. But, though imported singers are headlined, home talent has its chance. Last autumn San Franciscans had reason to be proud of Josephine Tumminia (TIME, Dec. 9), a local barber's daughter who will have leading coloratura roles again this season. After La Juive last week critics praised John Howell, a local baritone...