So was John Adams’ Nixon in China, which premiered in Houston in 1987. The Porgy and Bess he mounted in Houston in 1976 was a transformative and widely-traveled breakthrough. Gockley called the Center, which will bring a variety of the company’s artistic, technical and administrative operations under one roof, a cornerstone of his legacy.Īmong his other enduring accomplishments are an endowment that grew from $45 million to nearly $200 million during his tenure, “union peace,” the Wagner Ring cycle that will return to San Francisco Opera in 2018 and the appointment of music director Nicola Luisotti to “strengthen the Italian repertoire, which really needed some attention.”īoth here and in Houston, Gockley focused a steady beam of attention on American works, both through revivals and commissions. A mini-season of three chamber operas for that facility’s 299-seat Atrium Theater will be announced in October. Wilsey Opera Center in the refurbished Veterans Building in 2016. Gockley is keenly anticipating the opening of the new Diane B. “The time has come to look at the human and comedic sides of Richard Wagner.” “I absolutely adore Die Meistersinger,” Gockley added, noting that he has not been able to mount the piece since an English-language version in Houston in the 1970s. The Bieito-directed Carmen will replace the 1981 Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production that Gockley termed “venerable but tired.” The general director handicapped Lucia, starring Diana Damrau and Piotr Beczala, as the possible “sleeper of the year” and foresaw a “shattering” experience from a Jenůfa cast led by Malin Byström and Karita Mattila. In order to accomplish it, Gockley enlisted the Houston Grand Opera and Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet as producing partners. “It’s a piece of genius that deserves the kind of operatic treatment we can give it,” he said. As for Sweeney Todd, Gockley reflected on the success he had mounting that stunning Sondheim musical in Houston in the mid-1980s. “It may be my favorite piece.” Jenůfa earned a similar stamp of affection. “I wanted to do a Don Carlo for sure,” he said in a phone conversation.

Gockley didn’t hesitate to acknowledge his personal signature on the new season. Other highlights include a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor, the company debut of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, the San Francisco premiere of the David McVicar production of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, a staging of Bizet’s Carmen by the incendiary Spanish director Calixto Bieito, a star-power cast in Janáček’s Jenůfa and the American premiere of a Gordon Getty-Claude Debussy double-bill based on Edgar Allan Poe’s T he Fall of the House of Usher. Revivals of Verdi’s Don Carlo, Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Rossini’s The Barber of Seville round out the bill. The 10-production season, announced this week, opens fittingly enough with a Verdi opera, Luisa Miller, that Gockley has never mounted in his 44-year career, three decades of it spent at the helm of the Houston Grand Opera.

With a 2015-16 season studded with masterworks freshly imagined and others fresh to the War Memorial Opera House stage, San Francisco Opera general director David Gockley bids farewell to the company he has led for the past dynamically changing decade. Usher House with Welsh National Opera photo: Stephen Cummiskey

San francisco opera 2016