For All Events
Carol Benet
Merola: The Merola Opera Program is revered in the world of emerging artists aspiring for a career. This year over 1,500 international contestants applied and 28 were chosen and just started their summer training. Singers, pianists, coaches, directors arrived in San Francisco and were already placed in performances.
The 2026 Merola Summer Festival started April 1 with recitals by former participants. Concerts, and two operas, training sessions, master classes and a Grand Finale follow until the program ends August, 2026.
A recital on June 16 featured well-known opera singer bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen accompanied by the master pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson who is also the Artistic Director of the Merola program. Six recent Merlini, as the new Merola winners are called, performed a duet solos and a portion of Puccini’s “Tosca” where Ketelsen sang the villain role of Scarpia to a very talented Soprano Charlotte Kelson as Tosco.
In the first part of the program Ketelsen sang three solos by Ravel” and a Mozart duet with Shannon Crowley . Extremely talented participants, tenor Chester-Seungyup, baritone Paul Jang and tenor Ryan Bryce, also sang solos, duets and after the intermission, they all sang and acted in a very dramatic excerpt from “Tosca”. The director of the concert was Claire Choquette and a second piano accompanist Deven Shah are both this year’s Merola winners.
Scheduled for the rest of the summer are another concert, two operas and the Grand Finale.
On June 25 “L’Anima Napolitana” is a recital of songs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from Napoli. July 9 and 11 is a rendition of Bizet’s opera by the innovative and famous producer/director Peter Brook’ who rethought “La Tragédie de Carmen”. On July 30 and August 1 is the second opera, Richard Strauss’s “Ariadne aux Naxos”. Both operas are performed at the SF Conservatory of Music’s Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, 50 Oak Street, San Francisco.
And the culmination of the Merola summer program is the very popular Grand Finale on August 15 with conductor William Lang and current Merola participant director Claire Choquette. This takes place at the War Memorial Opera House.
More information on the world famous Merola Summer Festival look at merola.org.
