Mayor Lurie Celebrates MOU Between San Francisco Opera And Shanghai Grand Opera House
Office of the MayorSigned in Shanghai, Memorandum of Understanding Will Advance Cultural Understanding, Artist and Performance Exchange Between Institutions; Builds on Mayor Lurie’s Work to Ensure Arts and Culture Continue to Drive San Francisco’s Comeback
SAN FRANCISCO – Mayor Daniel Lurie today celebrated the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the San Francisco Opera and Shanghai Grand Opera House on his first international trip as mayor to Shanghai and Seoul. The MOU will create a partnership between the operas, advancing cultural exchange and cooperation through joint opera productions, artist and performance exchanges, co-productions, and expanded collaboration on education, training, and artist development programs.
Signed in Shanghai, the MOU between opera houses comes shortly after San Francisco hosted its first performance of Bohème Out of the Box in partnership with SF Opera—bringing free family entertainment to fans in the city. To continue driving San Francisco’s comeback through the arts, the mayor is advancing the city’s creative economy with a search for San Francisco’s new executive director of arts and culture. In his first year in office, he launched SF LIVE, a citywide show guide and online events calendar designed to boost ticket sales for live arts venues, and brought back SF Music Week, which returned this year, further strengthening San Francisco’s position as a vital music hub. This summer, he launched a free downtown concert series, celebrated the “Summer of Music” that drew tens of thousands and generated over $150 million in local economic impact, and kicked off the “Winter of Music.”
“This collaboration between San Francisco Opera and Shanghai Grand Opera House strengthens our global connections and enriches our arts and culture communities,” said Mayor Lurie. “Through this partnership, we are establishing a framework for joint productions, artist exchanges, and projects like The Monkey King—expanding global audiences and reinforcing San Francisco’s place on the world stage.”
“San Francisco Opera has enjoyed a deep and interconnected relationship with Shanghai since the 1980s and we are thrilled to reaffirm and build on that historic relationship with this important memorandum of understanding,” said Matthew Shilvock, San Francisco Opera General Director. “As we saw so viscerally in The Monkey King, there are thrilling opportunities to connect America and Asia through the arts, and through the storytelling possibilities of opera in particular. I am excited to work with our friends in Shanghai to realize increasing Trans-pacific cultural interchanges, celebrating the extraordinary growth that China is seeing in opera.”
The signing marks another milestone in Mayor Lurie’s trip to China and South Korea to strengthen San Francisco’s sister city relationships with Shanghai and Seoul, deepen arts and culture partnerships, and promote tourism to San Francisco.