Pocket Opera is a professional chamber opera company based in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

that presents staged chamber productions of operas sung in English. The company, founded in 1978, offers performances of both famous and lesser-known selections of operatic literature, accompanied by its chamber orchestra the Pocket Philharmonic. Since its inception, Pocket Opera has developed a repertoire that now includes over 90 operas. Pocket Opera’s season typically runs from March through July and includes four to five productions. Its current artistic director is Nicolas A. Garcia.

History

The company’s founder and Artistic Director Emeritus, Donald Pippin began creating English performance translations of opera libretti in the 1960s, which led to the founding of Pocket Opera. These accessible, highly singable, and often witty settings now include over 70 operas, and form the backbone of Pocket Opera’s productions. They have also been used by other companies, including Washington National Opera, San Francisco Opera Center, San Diego Opera, Juilliard School of Music, Aspen Music Festival, and companies in Canada, The UK, and Australia. Performance scores of Pippin’s translations are archived at Stanford University, and are available for rent through Pocket Opera.

Venues

Pocket Opera’s San Francisco venue is the historic Gunn Theater at the

Legion of Honor museum The Legion of Honor, formally known as the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, is an art museum in San Francisco, California. Located in Lincoln Park, the Legion of Honor is a component of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which also ...

. The company also regularly performs at the

Hillside Club The Hillside Club is a neighborhood social club established in 1898 by residents of Berkeley, California's newly formed Northside neighborhood to protect the hills from unsightly grading and unsuitable buildings. It took its cue from the Arts ...

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...

, and at various venues on the Peninsula and the North Bay.

References

External links

Official WebsiteJoshua Kosman of the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' on Pocket Opera (April 22, 2002)Review of Pocket Opera's ''Rigoletto'' (July 7, 2006)Donald Pippin article at SF Classical Voice (April 13, 2010)
{{authority control California opera companies Musical groups established in 1978 Musical groups from San Francisco 1978 establishments in California