San Francisco Opera returns with Pride Concert at War Memorial Opera House
Opera House Pride goes all night, with Sapphira Cristál hosting, a 7:05 p.m. talk and a post-show dance party on the eve of Pride Weekend.
The War Memorial Opera House will trade its usual grand formality for a Pride-centered night of music, memory and celebration as San Francisco Opera brings back its second annual Pride Concert. Set for Friday, June 26, at 8 p.m., the one-night-only program lands on the eve of San Francisco Pride Weekend and is designed to turn an elite stage into a community space that feels open to LGBTQ+ San Franciscans and their allies.
Sapphira Cristál will host the evening, with Robert Mollicone conducting the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and soloists Melody Moore, Nikola Printz and Reginald Smith, Jr. The program stretches from opera and musical theater to pop and soul, with music by Michael Tilson Thomas, Gounod, Giordano, Offenbach, Terence Blanchard, Michael Abels, Stephen Schwartz, k.d. lang, Brandi Carlile, Luther Vandross and Stevie Wonder.
San Francisco Opera said the Pride Concert was introduced last summer and is part of a broader run of one-night-only events in the company’s 103rd season. The format is built to do more than symbolically wave a rainbow flag from the balcony. Guests are encouraged to arrive early for a pre-concert talk at 7:05 p.m., view educational displays, and stay late for a post-show dance party with DJ Juanita MORE!
The partners around the event deepen that purpose. The National AIDS Memorial is bringing AIDS Memorial Quilt panels, part of a project that includes more than 50,000 panels commemorating more than 110,000 lives lost to AIDS. Its Grove, described as the nation’s sole federal memorial to AIDS, draws more than 300,000 visitors a year. The GLBT Historical Society, founded in 1985, will also have a presence, extending the concert beyond performance into preservation of LGBTQ+ history and culture. The society established the first U.S. museum of LGBTQ+ history and culture in 2011.
On the Opera House front steps, the Marigold Project will present an altar called Rainbows All Around Us. Hand Bookbinders of California is also joining the evening by repurposing a retired 30-by-20-foot rainbow flag that once flew over Harvey Milk Plaza in the Castro District, tying the concert directly to one of San Francisco’s most visible LGBTQ+ landmarks.
The result is less like a standard gala than a civic gathering staged inside one of the city’s most formal cultural institutions. By folding in remembrance of AIDS, the history work of the GLBT Historical Society, and the Castro’s rainbow flag itself, San Francisco Opera is asking whether Pride programming can do more than signal support. In San Francisco, at least for one night, it is trying to make the answer visible in the house, on the steps and on the dance floor.
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