The San Diego Opera Association (SDO) is a professional opera company located in the city of San Diego, California and is a member of OPERA America. It was founded in 1950 to present productions by San Francisco Opera in the San Diego area. SDO began to stage its own productions in 1965, with its first staging of La Bohème.
The founding SDO general director was Walter Herbert, who served in that position from 1965 until his death in 1975. Tito Capobianco served as general director from 1976 to 1983, and began an annual Verdi Festival. Since 1983, the SDO general director has been Ian Campbell.
The resident conductor of San Diego Opera is Karen Keltner. Since 2005, SDO's principal guest conductor has been Edoardo Müller. Since 2005, musicians from the San Diego Symphony have performed as the pit orchestra for San Diego Opera.
Notable artists who have performed with San Diego Opera include Ferruccio Furlanetto, Luciano Pavarotti, Denyce Graves, Beverly Sills, Joan Sutherland, Richard Bonynge, Richard Leech, Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming, Jane Eaglen, Richard Margison, Jerry Hadley, Vivica Genaux, Isabel Bayrakdarian James Westman and Carol Vaness.
Notable performances include the World Premiere of Myron Fink's The Conquistador, Gian Carlo Menotti's La Loca (with Beverly Sills), Alva Henderson's Medea and the United States Premiere of Daniel Catán's Rapaccini's Daughter, Hanz Werner Henze's The Young Lord, Ricardo Zandonai's Giulietta e Romeo and Emmanuel Chabrier's Gwendoline.
Additional notable performances and productions include: the farewell performance of Beverly Sills opposite Joan Sutherland in Die Fledermaus; the San Diego Opera commissioned, Zandra Rhodes productions of, The Magic Flute (2001) and The Pearl Fishers (2004); the West Coast premieres of Giuseppe Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco and I Lombardi, and of Sergei Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges.
San Diego Opera performs at the San Diego Civic Theater in Downtown. The season goes from January to April, featuring four productions a year.
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—Frances Burney (1752–1840)