Verdi at the Golden Gate: Opera and San Francisco in the Gold Rush Years

Opera is a fragile, complex art, but it flourished extravagantly in San Francisco during the Gold Rush years, a time when daily life in the city was filled with gambling, duels, murder, and suicide. In the history of the United States there has never been a rougher town than Gold Rush San Francisco, yet there has never been a greater frenzy for opera than developed there in these exciting years.

How did this madness for opera take root and grow? Why did the audience's generally drunken, braw...