San Francisco (War Memorial) Opera House

San Francisco, CA / Opened: 1932

The War Memorial Opera House is an opera house in San Francisco, California, located on the western side of Van Ness Avenue across from the west side/rear facade
of the San Francisco 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. It was the historic groundbreaking site for the organizing assembly San Francisco Conference for the new United Nations Organization (UNO or U.N.) in
April 1945, inspired by recently deceased 32nd President Franklin D. Roosevelt, following World War II, to replace the previous faltering League of Nations, from the
Versailles Treaty and Paris Peace Conference, ending World War I in 1919, inspired by 28th President Woodrow Wilson.

I first entered the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House in the late 1960s to see the American Ballet Theatre dance Giselle.
Now it's my opera house and I can't count the number of times I've made my way there to whatever seat my pocketbook could afford.

I saw Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn dance Paradise Lost there the night they - like poor lost little lambs - ended up at a
hippie pot party on Haight-Asbury, were arrested by the police on drug charges, and our beloved Rudy went grand-jeting around the
police station singing, "There Is Nothing Like A Dame" at the top of his lungs.

Margot, meanwhile, was on the phone to her manager whispering, "I've been a naughty little girl." (Ah, the'70s!)

---

- It will always be my ideal place to go to see the "Nutcracker" - and may I never become too old to do that.