San Francisco War Memorial Opera House
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| Address | 301 Van Ness Avenue San Francisco, California United States |
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| Coordinates | 37°46′43″N 122°25′15″W / 37.7786°N 122.4208°WCoordinates: 37°46′43″N 122°25′15″W / 37.7786°N 122.4208°W |
| Owner | San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center |
| Type | Opera house |
| Capacity |
3,146 seated 200 standing |
| Construction | |
| Opened | 1932 |
| Rebuilt | 1993 |
| Architect | Arthur Brown Jr., G. Albert Lansburgh |
| Tenants | |
| San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Ballet | |
| Website | |
| sfwmpac |
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3,146 seated
The War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, California is located on the western side of Van Ness Avenue across from the rear facade of City Hall. It is part of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center. It has been the home of the San Francisco Opera since opening night in 1932.
In 1927, $4 million in municipal bonds were issued to finance the design and construction of the first municipally owned opera house in the United States. The architects of the building complex were Arthur Brown Jr., who had designed City Hall between 1912 and 1916, and G. Albert Lansburgh, a theater designer responsible for San Francisco's Orpheum and the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.
Completed in 1932,it is one of the last Beaux-Arts structures erected in the United States and employs the classic Roman Doric order in a reserved and sober form appropriate to its function commemorating all those who served in World War I. A colonnade of paired columns screens colossal arch-headed windows above a severe rusticated basement, a scheme that owes something to Claude Perrault's severe East front of the Louvre.
The interior contains a grand entrance hall with a high barrel vaulted and coffered ceiling parallel to the street, with overlooks from staircase landings at each end.
The theater space is dominated by a massive aluminum and glass panel chandelier under a blue vault, and the proscenium arch is decorated with gilded figurative sculpture. The theater has 3,146 seats plus standing room for 200 behind the orchestra and balcony sections. This is smaller than the Metropolitan Opera (3800 seats) and the Chicago Lyric Opera (3500 seats), but it follows the trend of larger capacity in American opera houses than the main European opera houses of the 19th century (Paris Opera Garnier 2200, Royal Opera House London 2268, Vienna State Opera 2280, and La Scala 2800).
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