The San Diego Opera Association (SDO) is a professional opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 company located in the city of San Diego, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 and is a member of OPERA America

Opera America

Opera America, officially OPERA America, is a service organization in North America promoting the creation, presentation, and enjoyment of opera...

. It was founded in 1950 to present productions by San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...

 in the San Diego area. SDO began to stage its own productions in 1965, with its first staging of La Bohème.

The founding SDO general director was Walter Herbert

Walter Herbert (conductor)

Walter Herbert was an American conductor and impresario of German birth, as well as a world champion at contract bridge....

, who served in that position from 1965 until his death in 1975. Tito Capobianco

Tito Capobianco

Tito Capobianco is a noted stage director of opera.He made his official debut with Aïda, at the Teatro Argentino, La Plata, in 1953, then worked at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires...

 served as general director from 1976 to 1983, and began an annual Verdi Festival. Since 1983, the SDO general director has been Ian Campbell

Ian Campbell (opera director)

Ian David Campbell is an Australian-born opera singer, stage director, administrator, radio broadcaster and writer. He has been the General Director and Artistic Director of San Diego Opera since 1983....

.

The resident conductor of San Diego Opera is Karen Keltner. Since 2005, SDO's principal guest conductor has been Edoardo Müller. Since 2005, musicians from the San Diego Symphony

San Diego Symphony

The San Diego Symphony is an American symphony orchestra, based in San Diego, California. On 6 December 1910, it gave its first concert as the San Diego Civic Orchestra.Currently, the Symphony performs over 100 concerts each season...

 have performed as the pit orchestra for San Diego Opera.

Notable artists who have performed with San Diego Opera include Ferruccio Furlanetto

Ferruccio Furlanetto

Ferruccio Furlanetto is an Italian bass. His professional debut was in 1979 at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, in a production of Verdi's Macbeth, conducted by Claudio Abbado...

, Luciano Pavarotti

Luciano Pavarotti

right|thumb|Luciano Pavarotti performing at the opening of the Constantine Palace in [[Strelna]], 31 May 2003. The concert was part of the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of [[St...

, Denyce Graves

Denyce Graves

Denyce Graves is an American mezzo-soprano opera singer.-Early life:Graves was born on March 7, 1964, to Charles Graves and Dorothy Graves-Kenner. She is the middle of three children and was raised by her mother on Galveston Street, S.W., in the Bellevue section of Washington...

, Beverly Sills

Beverly Sills

Beverly Sills was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. In her prime she was the only real rival to Joan Sutherland as the leading bel canto stylist...

, Joan Sutherland

Joan Sutherland

Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s....

, Richard Bonynge

Richard Bonynge

Richard Alan Bonynge, AO, CBE is an Australian conductor and pianist.Bonynge was born in Sydney and educated at Sydney Boys High School before studying piano at the Royal College of Music in London. He gave up his music scholarship, continuing his private piano studies, and became a coach for...

, Richard Leech, Plácido Domingo

Plácido Domingo

Plácido Domingo KBE , born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range...

, Renée Fleming

Renée Fleming

Renée Fleming is an American soprano specializing in opera and lieder. Fleming has a full lyric soprano voice.Fleming has performed coloratura, lyric, and lighter spinto soprano repertoires. She has sung roles in Italian, German, French, Czech, and Russian, aside from her native English. She also...

, Jane Eaglen

Jane Eaglen

Jane Eaglen is an English dramatic soprano particularly known for her interpretations of the works of Richard Wagner and the title roles in Bellini's Norma and Puccini's Turandot.-Background:...

, Richard Margison

Richard Margison

Richard Charles Margison, OC is a Canadian operatic tenor. Margison was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2001 and lives in Toronto, Canada.- External links :** at The Canadian Encyclopedia...

, Jerry Hadley

Jerry Hadley

Jerry Hadley was an American operatic tenor. He received three Grammy awards for his vocal performances in the recordings of Jenůfa , Susannah , and Candide...

, Vivica Genaux

Vivica Genaux

Vivica Genaux is an American coloratura mezzo-soprano. Her father, an American of Belgian-Welsh descent, was a biochemistry professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and her mother, Mexican-born of Swiss-German extraction, was a language teacher...

, Isabel Bayrakdarian

Isabel Bayrakdarian

Isabel Bayrakdarian is a Grammy Award-nominated Armenian Canadian opera singer.-Early life:Born in Lebanon in 1974, she moved to Canada as a teenager. Bayrakdarian graduated in 1997 from the University of Toronto with an honours B.A.Sc...

 James Westman

James Westman

James Westman is a Canadian baritone known for his interpretation of the Verdi, Puccini and bel canto operatic repertoire, and particularly his signature role of Germont in La traviata, which he has sung in over 140 performances, with opera companies such as San Francisco Opera, Pittsburgh Opera,...

 and Carol Vaness

Carol Vaness

Carol Vaness is an American lyric soprano.Carol Vaness was born in San Diego and launched her professional career in 1977 with the San Francisco Opera...

.

Notable performances include the World Premiere of Myron Fink's The Conquistador, Gian Carlo Menotti

Gian Carlo Menotti

Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...

's La Loca (with Beverly Sills), Alva Henderson's Medea and the United States Premiere of Daniel Catán's Rapaccini's Daughter, Hanz Werner Henze's The Young Lord, Ricardo Zandonai's Giulietta e Romeo and Emmanuel Chabrier

Emmanuel Chabrier

Emmanuel Chabrier was a French Romantic composer and pianist. Although known primarily for two of his orchestral works, España and Joyeuse marche, he left an important corpus of operas , songs, and piano music as well...

's Gwendoline.

Additional notable performances and productions include: the farewell performance of Beverly Sills opposite Joan Sutherland in Die Fledermaus; the San Diego Opera commissioned, Zandra Rhodes

Zandra Rhodes

Zandra Rhodes, CBE, RDI, is an English fashion designer.Zandra Rhodes was introduced to the world of fashion by her mother, who was a fitter in a Paris fashion house and a teacher at Medway College of Art, now the University for the Creative Arts. Rhodes studied first at Medway and then at the...

 productions of, The Magic Flute (2001) and The Pearl Fishers (2004); the West Coast premieres of Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

's Giovanna d'Arco and I Lombardi, and of Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...

's The Love for Three Oranges.

San Diego Opera performs at the San Diego Civic Theater in Downtown. The season goes from late January to mid-May, featuring five productions a year.

External links

• San Diego Opera's official website
• "Pay to play", Preston Turegano, San Diego Union Tribune, 12 February 2006.
• "Playhouse, Opera get $1.3 million in grants", Preston Turegano, San Diego Union Tribune, 11 August 2006.
• The San Diego Civic Theatre