Photo Credit: Drew Altizer Photography
San Francisco’s glamorous Opera Ball 2015 won’t take place at venerable City Hall as it has the past few years. Instead, a tented Opera Ball Pavilion will be used to kick off David Gockley’s final season as San Francisco Opera’s General Director. Opera Ball 2015: Moonlight & Music, a gala benefit, takes place on Friday, Sept. 11 and celebrates San Francisco Opera’s 93rd season and opening-night performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Luisa Miller.
The last time there was an Opera Ball Pavilion was 2012, but this year’s location will be different than in previous years. Produced by San Francisco Opera Guild and led by co-chairmen Karen Kubin and Jane Mudge, Opera Ball 2015 will be celebrated in a tented Opera Ball Pavilion on Civic Center’s Grove Street between the War Memorial Opera House and Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall.
“(The Opera Guild) wanted to do something new and different,” SF Opera spokeswoman Julia Inouye wrote to Haute Living in an email over the weekend. “This begins the celebration of David Gockley’s final season and we are pulling out all the stops. We expect to draw a dazzling crowd, and this gives us a party just outside the Opera House doors.”
Acclaimed designer J. Riccardo Benavides will create an evocative 18th century Tyrolean setting for the 850 Opera Ball patrons beginning at 5 p.m. with a festive cocktail reception in the resplendent Beaux Arts-designed War Memorial Opera House foyer. At 6 p.m., guests will make the short promenade through the Opera House south porte-cochère to the Grove Street Opera Ball Pavilion for an elegant dinner designed by Executive Chef Lucas Schoemaker of McCalls Catering and Events. Following dinner, patrons will return to the Opera House in time for the magnificent gold grand drape to rise for the 8 p.m. season-opening performance of Verdi’s romantic drama.
At the conclusion of the performance, Opera Ball 2015 guests will be welcomed back to the Opera Ball Pavilion for cocktails, savories, sweets and dancing to the incomparable New York City-based high society band, The Bob Hardwick Sound.
Christie’s at Hedge
Photo Credit: Copyright Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
Hurry because time is running out to check out an exciting exhibition at Hedge Gallery [501 Pacific Avenue], which has partnered with Christie’s to put on display this Post-War and Contemporary Art works which will be offered at auction this spring in New York. The exhibition, which includes works from the collection of Ileana Sonnabend and the estate of Nina Castelli Sundel, offers major works by established blue-chip artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud as well as examples of cutting-edge contemporary art.
Remaining viewing times are:
April 18, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
April 19, closed
April 20, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
April 21, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
April 22, 10 a.m. – 12 noon