Preservation triumphed, how-ever, in the case of a basement door clearly labeled "Music Library." Killoran explained that while the music library was elsewhere and this was now the opera orchestra manager's office, the door was protected, sign and all. The conductor Gaetano Merola, who founded the San Francisco Opera in 1923 and ran it for 30 years, established the company's reputation for top voices. He could attract great voices and leading conductors because in those days the San Francisco seas on in the fall took place before the new York Met or the leading Italian houses opened for business. Kurt Herbert Adler ran the house for the next 28 years, maintaining Merola's musical values and introducing a contemporary concern for stage production va lues, values that were maintained during the 1980s by his successor, Terence McEwen. Since 1989 the general director—only the company's fourth—has been Lotfi Mansouri, an ebullient veteran stage director whose association with the San Francisco Opera dates from 1963 and includes more than 60 operatic stagings, during much of which time he was also resident stage director at the opera houses in Zurich and Geneva, then director of the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto. Actually, the San Francisco connection for the Iranian-born Mansouri is even older. "My father sent me to the University of California at Los Angeles to study medicine," he recalled. "One day I saw a notice that the San Francisco Opera needed supers for its Los Angeles s eason. They were paying $1, which just about covered the bus fare." So it was that he made his opera debut, of sorts, as a spear carrier in Verdi's "Otello" in 1951, then graduated to advanced studies as an usher in the upper reaches of the im mense Shrine Auditorium, where the San Francisco Opera then dispensed culture to the benighted Angelenos. That was it for medicine, although it took years and success as a stage director to assuage his father's anger. "I think opera is for everyone,&# 34; Mansouri said, "it has such a wide gamut. Nothing has grown so fast. Not so long ago the San Francisco Opera was the only one on the West Coast. Now there are 22 companies, large and small, in California alone. We are looking at the generation of MTV, where each production is a mini-opera." He had a chance to test this idea last year, during the company's exile from its home. Mansouri set up a "Broadway style" run of 24 performances in three weeks of a new production of Puccini's " La Boheme" in the ornate, 2,400-seat Orpheum Theatre. More than 45,000 tickets were sold at moderate prices (by operatic standards), and more than 60 percent of the audience consisted of young people who had never gone to an opera before. The experime nt was repeated this year, in a slightly reduced form, with "Madama Butterfly." It was a less startling success, but the food for thought remains. On the other hand, Mansouri is also anxious to maintain the company's record for presenting new work s. He has commissioned two American composers to create their first operas for the company. Andre Previn is tackling Tennessee Williams's "Streetcar Named Desire," the premiere of which is scheduled for next September with Renee Fleming as Blanche and Rodney Gilfry as Stanley, and Colin Graham staging. Bobby McFerrin and the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner are collaborating on "Saint Cecilia," a tale by the German author Heinrich von Kleist set in the Thirty Years' War, sche duled for 1999. History and tradition played a determining role in the current season. Because Merola opened the War Memorial Opera House with Puccini's "Tosca" on Oct. 15, 1932, that was the choice for opening night this year, with Nello Santi co nducting a solid cast headed by Carol Vaness, Richard Margison as Cavaradossi and James Morris as Scarpia. The Belgian designer Thierry Bosquet based his sets freely on those of Armando Agnini used 65 years ago, realistic and highly decorative.
Whatever happens onstage this season, it will surely be the house itself that stars. For many, the most memorable moment will be the playing of the national anthem at the opening night gala. When it came to "the rockets' red glare, bombs bursting in a ir," the darkness gave way to a spiraling explosion of light in the five-layer chandelier, triggered by a timed sequence of 46 dimming circuits, revealing the restored house in all its golden radiance.