Opera in Old San Francisco: A Brief Anecdotal History

Gold was the lure! Opera in the world's western hemisphere - whether sung in Italian, French, German, or English - began in the Spanish colonies of South and Central America. Years before operas were first staged in San Francisco, opera companies flourished in Lima, Santiago, Valparaiso, and Mexico City. Gold taken from the earth paid for opera houses and performers in the Spanish colonies - just as it would pay for them in San Francisco after the discovery of gold in California in 1848. And after gold was next discovered in Australia in 1851, performers continued there from California and to Asia beyond. More than anything else, gold discoveries were responsible for spreading opera from its origins in Europe to much of the rest of the world. After performing in San Francisco, early singers often traveled inland to perform briefly in the rough mining camps. Miners in the gold camps, hungry for entertainment, rewarded them with fistfuls of nuggets they had taken from the streams of the Sierra foothills. Against all odds, opera became a favorite form of entertainment in the rough, often violent, and largely male population of old San Francisco. Opera in Old San Francisco is a lively recital of operatic history in San Francisco from the Gold Rush of 1849 to the Earthquake and Fire of 1906. It tells the stories of such well known singers as Adelina Patti, Nellie Melville, Luisa Tetrazzini, Enrico Caruso, and many others who performed in early San Francisco. It relates the rags-to-riches story of Kate Hayes that ended in her early death. It tells of the success of Anna Bishop in San Francisco, and her shipwreck on Wake Island as she sailed for Australia. It gives accounts of the first two sopranos born in California: Emma Nevada, bon in a mining camp, raised in Nevada City, and schooled at Mills College; and the beautiful Sybil Sanderson, whose early engagement to future newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst was ended by the disapproval of her father, an early