West Bay Opera

HistoryPocket Opera is the creation of its Artistic Director, Donald Pippin who, in 1954 began presenting and performing with chamber, Renaissance, and small ensembles in North Beach cabarets. Unexpectedly, these instrumental performances metamorphosed into vocal recitals, culminating with some a number of one-act operas which became wildly popular. Mr. Pippin felt strongly about making opera accessible to as wide an audience as possible and created original English language transcriptions, many of them rarely performed. In 1960, these operas were presented in concert at the Old Spaghetti Factory. In 1977, prompted by the tremendous success of these performances, members of the audience met and incorporated Pocket Opera as a non-profit organization.SpecialtiesPocket Opera presents english translations of professional operatic works in intimate, intelligible productions at affordable prices. Donald Pippin's approach to opera is to tell the story in the clearest manner possible. He once said that there is