San Francisco native Elio Bucky, once a member of the San Francisco Boys Chorus, was aware of the prominent Merola Opera Program when he applied for it in 2024.
“For the summer after my freshman year in college I interned at Merola’s offices at Opera Plaza and saw firsthand how amazing the training was,” says Bucky, who studied singing at the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts and voice and opera performance at Northwestern University. “One of my jobs was to digitize the photo archive that had existed in physical form for 60 years or so, and so not only was I seeing up close and personal how amazing the program was, but also the legacy.”
Similarly, Sofia Gotch of Oakland was a member of the California Revels choir as a youngster. She became aware of Merola, which was founded in 1957, three years ago when some of her classmates at the Manhattan School of Music attended the summer course.
“I found out that it was in the Bay Area, and the idea of being home for a summer was exciting for me,” she says. “I talked to my teacher about it and she recommended that I apply but told me to wait, so I applied this past audition season.”
Bucky and Gotch are two of 1,300 applicants among the 26 Merola participants in 2025. It marks the first time in the program’s history that two Bay Area students are in the same class. The training, which began June 26, culminates in the Merola Grand Finale in San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House on Aug. 16.
Bucky, 28, sang in the San Francisco Boys Chorus after his elementary school best friend encouraged him.
“He joined it a couple of years before I did, and at a certain point he said, ‘You’re always singing around the playground and in the classroom, like, you should come join me after school and actually sing with a chorus,’” Bucky recounts. “And so I did.”
When the Boys Chorus participated in San Francisco Opera’s 2008 production of “La Bohème,” it left a lasting impression on Bucky.
“I remember being on stage surrounded by my colleagues and all sorts of people I had never met before, all part of this larger thing and being struck by how amazing the experience was and how lucky I was to be in a community like that,” he says.
After five years with the SFBC, Bucky says his appreciation for opera amplified during high school at SOTA.
“They had a fantastic vocal department, and as part of the curriculum there’s an opera scenes program,” he says. “So that was my first time really stepping into solo repertoire and opera, and I loved that and then I went on to get two degrees in singing.”
Bucky turned to opera directing at Northwestern, where students in the undergraduate-run opera company made decisions on repertoire, casting, sets and marketing. As a younger undergraduate, he worked on several productions; as a senior, he led one. A lover of contemporary music, Bucky opted to stage Melissa Dunphy’s “The Gonzales Cantata” in the first time that troupe presented a work by a woman composer. It was on bill with Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Trial by Jury.”
“At the end of the process, being able to sit back and watch what the fruits of that collaborative labor produced, I realized I derived a lot more satisfaction from being not onstage, but being able to help all the elements come together,” Bucky says.
As the Merola Program’s apprentice stage director, Bucky, following tradition, is at the helm of the Grand Finale.
“It’s really a tremendous honor to be directing on the same stage where I first encountered opera as a child,” says Bucky, who hopes someday to direct Korngold’s “Die tote Stadt,” Weill’s “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” and Donizetti’s “L’elisir d’amore.”
Gotch, 27, whose grandfather is a pianist and composer, grew up with music at home. At age 6, she tried out for Oakland’s California Revels when her sister auditioned for its Children’s Chorus. Both were accepted into the chorus, and Gotch enjoyed performing, especially with her sister. But hearing the Adult Chorus had an even greater impact on her.
“…. I’d never heard choral singing like this,” she says. “I was totally surrounded by sound, and I remember thinking, ‘I want to be them, I want to do this,’ and I was hooked after that.”
Upon entering Piedmont High School, Gotch sang in its a cappella group and with the season-caroling Piedmont Troubadours.
“It was a great experience and in my last year I was the music director of the a cappella group,” she says. “That was really rewarding and started to show me that I enjoyed leadership positions in music as well.”
Gotch became an English major at University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington when she didn’t get in to the music school. However, after an adviser who heard her on SoundCloud recommended a music advisory class, Gotch started voice lessons with her choir director, which led to her double major in music and English.
Gotch’s first solo opera role was the Vixen in Janacek’s “The Cunning Little Vixen” at the Manhattan School of Music. Although difficult, turned out to be one of her favorites. (Others are Titania from Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Juliet in Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet.”)
“The character felt so much like me, and I didn’t have to act,” she says. “I got to explore all these different sides of myself and find vulnerability in that onstage in a really public way, which is frightening, but also helped me on this journey of being an artist and not getting in your own way onstage.”
Gotch, a lyric coloratura soprano, would love to sing Gilda in Verdi’s “Rigoletto” and Susanna in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro.” In the Merola finale, she is singing “Willow Song” from Douglas Moore’s “The Ballad of Baby Doe” and the “Evening Prayer” duet from Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel.”
Gotch, who hopes eventually join a major opera company, has learned a valuable lesson as a Merolini: “… I’ve really started to understand how to be an artist, not just how to do things right because that’s not artistic, that’s almost formulaic,” she says. “That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned, was my biggest goal, and I feel I’m getting there.”
The Merola Opera Program Grand Finale is at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 16 in the War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Ave. San Francisco. For tickets ($10-$95) call (415) 864-3330 or visit sfopera.com.
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