![]() And lo and behold I auditioned for John Crosby and John Moriarty for The Santa Fe Opera and became an apprentice just after I graduated from Brown. ![]() Then my choral professor Erich Kunzel suggested that I might have the voice to sing opera. While I didn’t flunk out, I did not at all excel. MAS: So, there you were, a student at Brown…ĭG: I was studying engineering - in the early 60s, everybody had to be an engineer, with Sputnik and all that. Then when I was at Brown, I went up to Boston and saw The Tales of Hoffmann, with Beverly Sills and Norman Treigle. So I knew what an aria was and I’ve always believed since that time that arias are our calling cards: They’re short, they’re sweet, and they touch. Also, I saw Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso. And of course opera singers appeared periodically on Ed Sullivan, like Leontyne Price singing “Pace, pace mio dio” from La forza del destino. Scorca: Let me start by asking you: What was your introduction to opera?ĭavid Gockley: My parents didn’t attend opera, but they sat me down on Sunday evenings to watch The Voice of Firestone and its successor, The Bell Telephone Hour. Gockley, who helmed OPERA America’s board from 1985 to 1990, visited the National Opera Center this spring for an unbuttoned conversation with OPERA America President/CEO Marc A. As general director of Houston Grand Opera (1972–2005) and then in San Francisco (2006–2016), Gockley not only offered 44 years of repertory opera at the highest international level, but he also created an astonishing legacy of 43 world premieres, including Leonard Bernstein’s A Quiet Place, John Adams’ Nixon in China, Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas, Mark Adamo’s Little Women, Carlisle Floyd’s Cold Sassy Tree and Christopher Theofanidis’ Heart of a Soldier. When David Gockley retires in July as general director of San Francisco Opera, he’ll put a cap on one of the most extraordinary careers in American opera. ![]() David Gockley (photo: Terrence McCarthy). ![]()
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