Department of Music
Adjunct Faculty
Willene Gunn
Opera Workshop
Willene Gunn served as a member of the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for 30 years, as Director of the Conservatory Opera Program. Upon her retirement in the spring of 2005 the Conservatory conferred on her the honorary degree of Doctor of Music. Ms. Gunn taught voice at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and staged operas in workshops at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Nevada. She has directed over 80 major works by Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Bernstein, and other major composers for Nevada, Sacramento, Arizona operas, the San Francisco Opera Center, and other companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. A graduate of the San Francisco Opera Merola program, Ms. Gunn performed extensively on the West Coast as a dramatic mezzo-soprano with the San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Oakland, and Nevada opera companies in Aida, Falstaff, Peter Grimes, The medium, The Consul, and numerous others. Her symphonic repertory included Verdi's Requiem, and Beethoven's ninth symphony. She performed in operetta, musical comedy and legitimate theatre, in roles ranging from most of the mezzo-soprano roles in Gilbert and Sullivan, the alto leads in The Sound of Music, Carousel, and South Pacific, and as Hecuba in The Trojan Women. She produced and directed over 35 productions at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and in 2000 the Conservatory awarded her the Sarlo Award for excellence in Teaching. A text book Teaching Opera, The Role of the Opera Workshop ... With Scene Catalogue written in partnership with Kathryn Cathcart, will be published by Leyerle Press in 2007.
Willene Gunn is sponsored by the Rogue Valley Opera.
