Gaetano Merola [SEP] date of death
Gaetano Merola
Gaetano Merola (4 January 1881 – 30 August 1953) was an Italian conductor, pianist and founder of the San Francisco Opera.
Biography.
Merola was born in Naples, the son of a Neapolitan court violinist and studied piano and conductor at the Naples conservatory. He emigrated to the United States in 1899 and served as an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, Henry Wilson Savage's opera company in Boston, and Fortune Gallo's traveling San Carlo Opera Company. Oscar Hammerstein I hired Merola as choral
assistant chorus director where he worked for five years.
Gaetano Merola, then General Director of the San Francisco Opera, heard of him and, over the telephone, invited him to the San Francisco Opera in 1943 as chorus director.
In the following ten years, he took on more and more administrative details as Merola's health and energy diminished. While Adler was not the Board's natural choice to replace Merola at the time of his death in 1953, after three months of acting as Artistic Director and with the