Friends, family and fans have been expressing their gratitude for the life of Opera San Jose founder Irene Dalis since news of her death Sunday at age 89.
A lot has been shared through social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, and when you step back, you can get the sense of the huge number of people whose lives she touched, whether they were singers to whom she gave her first break or students who saw their first opera because of her.
On Facebook, Ben Miyaji recalled meeting Miss Dalis — as everyone called her — more than 20 years ago during his first term as a member of San Jose’s arts commission. “I was completely in awe of Irene’s dynamic personality, and her deep caring for the arts community is what we all should strive to achieve,” he wrote.
I remember also being in awe of her when we first met — and petrified to be on stage at a lighthearted roast for her 85th birthday party at the San Jose Improv. Another stunner was when I walked through the Grill on the Alley in downtown San Jose one afternoon to discover Dalis at lunch with Linda Ronstadt, the two comparing notes on singers and sharing their admiration for San Jose.
The annual Irene Dalis Vocal Competition each spring became another way she helped launch the careers of emerging singers, and it remains a great legacy for her. So is the California Theatre, a grand venue that is Opera San Jose’s home. It was restored more than a decade ago with funding from the city and the Packard Humanities Institute, but insiders know that it never would have happened without Irene Dalis. And that can be said about so much of the arts in San Jose.
POST-HANUKKAH HILARITY: It’s been more than a decade since Scott, Shannon and Stephen Guggenheim introduced their holiday musical comedy “The MeshugaNutcracker!,” and it’s back in the Bay Area this month in anticipation of making a New York City debut in 2015.
The show — which marries Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” score to a Hanukkah story — just finished up a run at San Francisco’s Marines’ Memorial Theatre and opens at the Heritage Theater in Campbell next week for a Dec. 25-28 run. As the Guggenheims have told me in the past, you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy the 120-minute production, but it might make it a little more funny if you are.
Tickets are $54-$72 and can be ordered by calling the box office at 408-404-7711.
Contact Sal Pizarro at [email protected]. Follow him at Twitter.com/spizarro.
