Abstract

Italian opera in San Francisco, where it had arrived in 1851, still showed poor executive quality in 1894 – at least according to the testimony of Umbrian engineer and journalist Ettore Patrizi – as theatre companies sang it simultaneously in different languages. It was thanks to his strong “love of country” that the last few years of the 19th century saw the arrival at the California theatre of the first fully Italian companies (Del Conte, Azzali, Lambardi) and their success served as a stimulus for the American manager of the Tivoli theatre to organize the first seasons of Italian opera. Working assiduously until the beginning of World War I, Patrizi then invited composers and singers to San Francisco (from Mascagni to Leoncavallo, from Luisa Tetrazzini to Tarquinia Tarquini) and contributed to informing the public about the operas performed through the pages of the newspaper “L’Italia” of which he was the director. Last but not least, he supported the construction of a monument to Giuseppe Verdi in Golden Gate Park (1914).