It’s one of the favors many of us hate to ask for: “Hey there, would you mind picking me up at the airport? And at 11:30pm, since I’m coming in from Europe?”

This most needed and minimally glamorous task is one that Christine Miller and Gary Glaser have done on behalf of San Francisco Opera for more than 30 years. They have picked up countless artists from San Francisco International Airport over the years, and it is one of the many reasons why they are the recipients of the 2013 Spirit of the Opera Award, the highest honor the Opera bestows upon members of our community. 

We at San Francisco Opera think of every person who comes to the Opera as part of our family. And our family, like any family, contains a wide variety of personalities and interests. But the undisputed ‘mother hen’ of our Opera family is Board Member Sylvia Lindsey, who this spring received the 2012 Spirit of the Opera Award, the highest honor the Opera Association confers upon non-artistic members of its community.

How many people does it takes to run a performance of Turandot? More than you might think!

My job at San Francisco Opera as video director is to work with the production team, the artists and the media team to direct the capture of each opera for television and theatrical distribution. I have been directing at the opera for 5 years. Rigoletto was my first plazacast to the civic center and it was very well received. David Gockley had the idea of building an HD suite on the 5^th floor of the opera house and I was fortunate to be hired as the resident video director. I have directed all of the AT&T Ballpark simulcasts and over 25 operas for OperaVision, television and theatrical distribution. Over the last five years, two other directors--Christine Strand and Bob Harnett—have also directed some of the operas.

Tenor Joseph Frank sings the role of Emperor Altoum in Turandot. Emperor Altoum is one million years old...and Joe Frank is not. It is makeup artist Timothy Santry's job to transform Joe before each performance of Turandot into a million-year-old Chinese emperor. But well before the first performance back in September, preparations were being made for this complicated transformation. Tim Santry started the look by creating a custom prosthetic face to be worn as a base for the look. We were there to capture photos of the process.