San Francisco Opera Has Announced $6 Million Gift by Tad and Dianne Taube to Name General Director Position
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Feb. 27, 2020
San Francisco Opera today announced that philanthropists Tad and Dianne Taube have committed $6 million to support the Company's general director position. Effective immediately, Matthew Shilvock, who is the seventh general director in San Francisco Opera's 97-year history, becomes the Company's first Tad and Dianne Taube General Director.
"Dianne and I have a long history of funding a variety of projects that support and enhance the San Francisco Opera," said Tad Taube, chairman of Taube Philanthropies and a Bay Area real estate executive. "We wanted to establish a lasting and meaningful legacy, and it seemed to us that the best way to ensure our opera company remains one of the world's best is to invest in the Opera's ability to recruit and retain brilliant general directors such as Matthew Shilvock."
"Matthew's extraordinary artistic expertise and insightful management talents are a valuable asset to the San Francisco Opera," said Dianne Taube, who has served on San Francisco Opera Association's Board of Directors since 2001. She was a past Board of Director's member of the San Francisco Opera Guild and chaired Opera Ball in 2000.
As longtime patrons and Company sponsors of San Francisco Opera, the Taube family has generously supported more than a dozen mainstage productions and provided signature funding for the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater, a state-of-the-art, 299-seat venue in the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera designed to be configured in multiple ways, providing both performers and audience with an intimate concert experience. Additionally, through their efforts in establishing the Koret/Taube Media Suite, the Taubes have been instrumental, as sponsors of Opera at the Ballpark, in supporting the Company's free live simulcasts at the home of the San Francisco Giants. Since 2007, San Francisco Opera's simulcasts have been experienced by more than 300,000 Bay Area residents and families.
"It is a great privilege to be partnering with Tad and Dianne in this new capacity," said Matthew Shilvock. "They have been at the forefront of creativity with the Company for so many years, championing transformative art on stage, and making possible innovative ways to reach new audiences. I am deeply grateful for their belief in the future of the Company and for their extraordinary generosity, and I am excited for what we can accomplish together in the years ahead."
Shilvock began with San Francisco Opera in 2005 working closely with then-General Director David Gockley. On August 1, 2016, Shilvock became General Director, assuming responsibility for all artistic and business aspects of the organization. His fourth season at the institutional helm, San Francisco Opera's 97th season, opened on September 7, 2019 and continues this summer with presentations June 7-July 3 of Verdi's early masterwork Ernani, Handel's comedy Partenope and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs by Bay Area composer Mason Bates.
ABOUT TAUBE PHILANTHROPIES
For more than 30 years, Taube Philanthropies has been a leader in supporting educational, cultural, medical, community and youth initiatives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and select programs in Poland and Israel. Founded by businessman and philanthropist Tad Taube in 1981, and now led by Tad and his wife, Dianne Taube, the foundation works to ensure that people across diverse backgrounds and generations have the freedom and opportunity to advance their goals and dreams, as well as to access world-class scientific and cultural resources.
ABOUT SAN FRANCISCO OPERA
San Francisco Opera has been recognized as one of the world's leading opera companies since its founding in 1923. The Company continues to be a vital artistic institution through its mainstage programming, renowned artist training programs and repertory-expanding commissions, including John Adams' Doctor Atomic and Girls of the Golden West, Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking, André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire, and Bright Sheng's Dream of the Red Chamber. Under the leadership of San Francisco Opera's Tad and Dianne Taube General Director Matthew Shilvock, the Company continues to pioneer new approaches to producing large-scale opera in the 21st century and creating impactful, reciprocal connections with the community. In 2021, Caroline H. Hume Music Director Designate Eun Sun Kim becomes San Francisco Opera's fourth music director and will carry the Company through its 2022-23 centennial and into the future.
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