David Gockley (born 13 July 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American opera company administrator. He served as general director of Houston Grand Opera from 1972 to 2005[1] and has been general director of San Francisco Opera since 2006.[2]
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David Gockley was born in Philadelphia in 1943 and grew up in Wayne, Pennsylvania.[3] He holds a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a master’s degree from Columbia University.[4] According to San Francisco Opera’s website,[2] his father was an athletic coach and inspired his early love for sports, and he inherited a passion for music from his mother. He is the father of three children: Meredith, Lauren, and Adam.[5]
Gockley has served as president of OPERA America and is currently a board member.[6]
In 1970, Gockley joined Houston Grand Opera as business manager and was appointed general director in 1972. Under his tenure, Houston Grand Opera presented 35 world premieres and six American premieres. Gockley oversaw the founding of the Houston Grand Opera Studio in 1977, the company’s young artist development program, and the opening of the Wortham Theater Center in 1987. He also introduced “plazacasts,” free broadcasts of mainstage opera productions to outdoor audiences; created OperaVision, a series of screens located throughout the Wortham Center that projected close-up shots of the action on stage; and began annual radio broadcasts of Houston Grand Opera performances in the U.S. and abroad.
After a 33-year tenure as general director, Gockley resigned from Houston Grand Opera in 2005 to assume the post of general director for San Francisco Opera.[7]
David Gockley became San Francisco Opera's sixth general director on January 1, 2006.[2]
Under Gockley's leadership, San Francisco Opera (SFO) has presented the world premieres of Appomattox by Philip Glass and Christopher Hampton as well as The Bonesetter's Daughter[8] by Stewart Wallace and Amy Tan. The company also presented the West Coast premieres of Rachel Portman's The Little Prince and Jake Heggie's chamber opera Three Decembers. San Francisco Opera has announced plans for three world premieres and two Bay Area premieres in future seasons by composers Mark Adamo, John Adams, Jake Heggie, Jennifer Higdon, and Christopher Theofanidis.[9]
Gockley has overseen the creation of San Francisco Opera's Koret-Taube Media Suite, the first permanent high-definition broadcast-standard video production facility installed in any American opera house according to the company's website.[10]
Through the Koret-Taube Media Suite, David Gockley expanded on the plazacasts he pioneered at Houston Grand Opera with a series of “simulcasts,” live broadcasts of San Francisco Opera mainstage performances to remote locations. The company has presented six simulcasts throughout San Francisco and the Bay Area, specifically to San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza, Stanford University's Frost Amphitheater, and four simulcasts presented on the scoreboard at San Francisco's AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants. All simulcasts have been presented free to the public, drawing as a many as 27,000 people.[11] San Francisco Opera also broadcast a live performance of Don Giovanni to four theaters across Northern California in June 2007.[12]
Gockley continued his OperaVision program[13] at San Francisco Opera and supervised the presentation of four San Francisco Opera productions in movie theaters across the United States. Unlike the Metropolitan Opera, which began live broadcasts of performances to theaters in 2006 using projection systems used for advertising,[14] San Francisco Opera partnered with The Bigger Picture to present four operas in a feature–film quality digital cinema format in 2008.[15]
In 2007, San Francisco Opera returned to national and international radio after 25 years under Gockley’s leadership.[16] Earlier that year, David Gockley announced the appointment of Italian conductor Nicola Luisotti as the company’s new music director, effective September 2009.[17] Luisotti is the company’s third music director following Sir John Pritchard and Donald Runnicles. In January 2009, Gockley announced the reappointment of Patrick Summers as principal guest conductor and named Giuseppe Finzi as the company’s new assistant music director.[9]