The ‘Eloise’ of The San Francisco Opera

My earliest memories of the opera were of handing out programs to the grown-ups who filed into the highest tier of the balcony and then carefully made their way down the steep staircase, where my mother, in glamorous black satin, would read their ticket and direct them to their seats. The acoustics in San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House are renowned, and the most fanatic opera lovers, who comprised the group of regular ushers and standing-room ticket-bearers, knew that the best sound was at the very top of the house, and on the left side with the strings.

Ushering was a way to see the show for free, standing room was cheap, and it was understood that the most knowledgeable and passionate aficionados in the house were not the ones occupying the most expensive seats closer to the stage, but up there in what we called the “nosebleeds.”

I often describe my younger self as the San Francisco Opera’s Eloise, flitting about the building in patent leather shoes and sagging socks like I lived there, my hands stained with program ink, my antics indulged by the staff and patrons, while developing a precocious appreciation of some of the most breathtaking music in the world sung by the greatest voices of the 80’s and 90s.

When my mother, a jewelry designer, moved on from ushering and started selling her work in the opera’s gift shop, I joined her there too. In those days the shop was housed in the enclosed space next to the boxes before the major donors took that for themselves and the shop assumed a kind of permanent pop-up status in the area outside that enclosure.

Though the shop has changed hands several times in the last thirty years, one thing that has been a constant, and which I didn’t fully appreciate when I was younger, is how unusual it is for a gift shop of a major institution and performing arts venue. While many stores of its kind simply sell branded “merch,” the opera shop celebrates local talent and creativity. My mother is a Ukrainian-born artist who makes one-of-a-kind work and has implemented a tradition of inviting patrons to model her pieces to their seats during the performances, adding an extra element of dress up and flamboyance to the operagoing experience.

Polish designer Amber Beatta shows her unique handmade amber jewelry, and Kathleen Kelley features her eye-catching fascinators–and these artists are also often present to chat with patrons in person–a perk you won’t often get to enjoy in regular retail outlets. Jan Padovar, who has operated the elevators on the south end of the building since the 80s, is also an accomplished watercolor artist, and his long running series of paintings of the opera house building and its various productions is a valuable visual chronicle of the opera’s history, and he sells originals as well as prints and postcards in the shop, too.

The assistant manager, Susan Montana, has amassed a fabulous collection of vintage jewelry, jackets, and shawls, and the shop’s manager, Jay Stebley, is a lifelong musician of rare and Balkan instruments and musical scholar, and he has curated the CD, DVD, and book collection with deep care and expertise.

In other words, the shop isn’t purely a moneymaking enterprise: its primary purpose is of course to support the opera, but more importantly it is there to give patrons a unique experience, to deepen their enjoyment of the theater and of the musical context to the performance they are seeing, and to give them a glimpse of the artistry still hanging on in San Francisco. That said, according to Stebley, sales from the fashion offerings in the shop in recent years have far surpassed those in the musical department, perhaps for obvious reasons in the age of iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube. Many of the classic recordings the shop used to offer for historical reference are no longer even being printed. Nevertheless, he says, “A night does not go by where I don’t hear someone say how much they love shopping there.”

I’m no longer an Eloise character in the opera house; I haunt the place like a regular longtime member of staff, and have lifelong friends on staff who have known me since my childhood. Many of them are approaching retirement age or have powered on well past, and have gathered from their various humble positions–usher, bartender, ticket taker, taxi hailer–a vast and still burgeoning love and wealth of experience witnessing one of the greatest, most expansive, most exquisitely detailed, most soul-splitting art forms the world has developed. They have listened to some of the most beautiful sounds made by human beings, lived to be among the lucky few to have heard such music made by the historic legends who have walked our stage, and chatted about it in the break room or over coffee in the canteen. For some of us, the “Grand Art” is all in a day’s work. “

The San Francisco Opera is currently playing La Bohème, Idomeneo, 2025 Pride Concert, & Bohème Out of the Box

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