“The San Francisco Opera today announced the name of its new general director: Matthew Shilvock, 39, will take over on August 1, 2016—after working for ten years in other capacities with the company,” writes Anne Midgette in Tuesday’s (9/22) Washington Post. “He will replace David Gockley, who … will retire at the end of the 2015-16 season…. Shilvock … has been serving as Gockley’s second-in-command as Associate General Director for the last five years. He came to San Francisco in 2005, with Gockley, after working for him in Houston for the last two years of his tenure [at Houston Grand Opera]…. Shilvock … oversaw the development of live opera simulcasts in the ballpark; negotiated a media rights agreement, and served as the lead negotiator with the labor unions…. Shilvock was born in 1976 in the English town of Kidderminster, and studied piano, organ and cello before going to Oxford to read musicology. … His first opera experience, however, was seeing a production of … ‘Beauty and the Beast’ by the composer Stephen Oliver, performed in a TV studio in which the audience followed the action of the piece from one space to another…. ‘That has stayed with me as a great guide to how interactive opera can be,’ Shilvock says.”
Posted September 23, 2015
