San Francisco Opera Center
non-profit organization in the USA
The San Francisco Opera Center (SFOC) is the San Francisco Opera's professional training center for opera singers. Based in San Francisco, it encompasses two different professional tracks for training: a summer training program known as the Merola Opera Program and a two year long term resident artist program known as the Adler Fellowship. For twenty years the SFOC also operated a touring opera company, the Western Opera Theatre, but for financial reasons this touring company was disbanded in 2003. In addition to providing training for opera singers, the Merola Opera Program also provides training for vocal coaches and stage directors. Four singers each year from the summer Merola Opera Program are offered Adler Fellowships with the San Francisco Opera. Soprano Sheri Greenawald served as director of the San Francisco Opera Center from 2002 through 2020.
History
The San Francisco Opera Center was founded in 1982 by San Francisco Opera director Terence A. McEwen with the intent of consolidating the operation and administration of various educational, community outreach, and performance programs already existing at the San Francisco Opera, including the Adler Fellowship Program, Merola Opera Program, Western Opera Theatre, the "Showcase Series", "Brown Bag Opera", "Opera Center Singers", and "Schwabacher Recitals", among others.
The Merola Opera Program was the oldest of these programs, being established more than sixty years ago. On August 30, 1953, San Francisco Opera founder and first General Director, Gaetano Merola, died at Stern Grove while conducting a young American singer in "Un bel di" from Madama Butterfly. Maestro Merola wanted to provide young American singers opportunities as little formal training was available in the United States at the time and scant audition opportunities existed on the west coast.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “San Francisco Opera Center” is non-profit organization in the USA. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Francisco, Opera and Center, not as a finished interpretation.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6819926. Authority coordinates are 37.779, -122.421. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2003, 2002, 2020 and 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “San Francisco Opera Center” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.