Dear Readers,
Bay Area Benefactor, Joseph Brucia, has left us. His funeral service was held on January 4, 2008. The San Francisco Chronicle described him as San Francisco opera lover who funded the simulcast.
Joe was an opera lover and did fund the opera simulcast but for the last 20 plus years he generously opened the grounds of “Villa Brucia”, his home in San Rafael, which included a bocce ball court, to many Italian American organizations for fund raising fun picnics and garden parties. Joseph Brucia, “Joe”, left us at age 92. He was born in 1925 to Angela Farina from Naples and Giuseppe Brucia, an immigrant from Sicily. As a first generation American he had a very strong upbringing in Italian culture and came from a family of opera lovers. Joseph’s family was one of the founders of the San Francisco Opera.
Joseph continued the legacy with generous donations and funded the first simulcast of a live opera, Madam Butterfly, shown in Civic Center Plaza and attended by over 8,000 people.
He was a successful businessman, involving himself in many aspects of the food business, and a real estate investor, with a number of commercial properties in Marin County and elsewhere. He touched many people with his generosity, humanity, caring and warmth. He left his family and the City of San Francisco a lasting legacy through his involvement in and contributions to the opera and other organizations.
He will be greatly missed, especially by those in the Italian American community. Mr. Brucia received the 2007 Man of the Year Award from Il Cenacolo, the Italian American Club founded in 1928 that still meets weekly to hear speakers and have lunch at Fior d’Italia restaurant on Mason Street, in San Francisco. Joe Brucia was the son of Giuseppe Brucia, who immigrated to America from Capo San Vito, in Sicily and was one of ten Italian Americans who underwrote the San Francisco Opera in 1922.
When, at the last moment, the lead tenor demanded to be paid in gold or he would not perform, Giuseppe Brucia’s hand shake guaranteed the $15,000 loan, to the satisfaction of A.P. Giannini, founder of the Bank of America (then Bank of Italy) and the show “I Pagliacci”, an open air performance before 10,000 patrons, in 1922 at the Stanford University Stadium went on… Years later, when the San Francisco Opera House was remodeled and retrofitted (to withstand earthquakes), a small plaque, honoring the ten Italian American Opera Founders turned up “missing”.
In an attempt to rewrite history, and “unclude” any acknowledgement of the personal sacrifice made by ten Italian American Opera aficionados to bring opera to San Francisco, all offers to replace or even accept a free, donated replacement plaque honoring the Italian Americans were rebuffed. The “deaf ears” of Opera House “OKyers” who tuned him out had not counted on the tenacity of Joe Brucia. “Finalmente” in 2002, with Al Baccari smoothing the way, a beautiful, big plaque designed and cast in bronze, was cemented onto the wall of the Opera House, so it would never “get lost” again.
The plaque was installed on the same square pillar that bears the plaque honoring Gaetano Merola’s dream (of establishing a permanent opera company in San Francisco.) Since 2002 you can see, installed in their honor, a plaque on the ground floor of the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, across from the southern stairway.
In 2006, San Francisco’s Opera new General Director, David Gockley and Joseph Brucia, son of Giuseppe Brucia, one of the ten Italian American founders of San Francisco Opera who ensured the funding that Maestro Gaetano Merola required to mount the first season in 1922, joined forces to inaugurate the first live outdoor, operatic simulcast performance in the Western United States.
It took an elaborate technological hookup for the San Francisco Opera to relay the Summer Season opening night performance of Puccini’s “Madam Butterfly” from the stage of the War Memorial Opera House to thousands of chilled enthusiastic fans watching the free video simulcast two blocks away at Civic Center Plaza. As the Summer Season opened, San Francisco Opera scored two “firsts” in one night. The production of Madam Butterfly was the first show to be overseen by the new General Director David Gockley.
And in memory of Giuseppe Brucia, thanks to the bulk of funds for the simulcast provided by his son Joe, it was the first San Francisco Opera to be telecast. David Gockley, in his opening remarks from the stage inside the War Memorial Opera House, reinforced his view of opera as a populist art form by invoking the company’s initial 1922 outdoor performance and then spotlighted Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Brucia to thank them for sponsoring the inaugural live simulcast to underscore the point that without Italian American early financial support there might have been a decade of delay in San Francisco Opera.
Among the highlights of Joe’s last year, 2007, were flying back to Cambridge, Massachusetts with his lovely wife Frances to attend the graduation of grandson Andrew J. Bestwick, who graduated magna cum laude in physics and mathematics from Harvard University.
Andrew is the son of his daughter Francesca and her husband, Judge Craig Bestwick. Walking down the aisle with his daughter Louise to “give the bride away” when she married “a nice Italian boy”, James Montelbano, at a wedding ceremony held on the thirteenth of October at Old St. Mary’s Church in San Francisco, was another special day for Joe. Joe Brucia, a veteran, businessman, a gentleman and a scholar, was born (1915) in New Jersey but moved with his family to California’s Santa Clara Valley, where his family owned an olive oil mill and a winery and later to San Francisco, where Joe attended Lowell High School and graduated from Santa Clara University before joining his father in the family olive oil business.
He served three years as an infantry soldier in the Pacific during World War II and returned to the United States as a businessman, launching a business to import dehydrated pineapple from Thailand. It was the first business of its kind in the nation. He also invested in real estate in Marin County and San Francisco, owned a bakery goods wholesale supply store in San Francisco and ran Marin Food Specialties, a snack mix business that catered to the then budding natural foods industry. Joe also owned a commercial bakery in Byron, California and recently purchased an Italian Cookie Company. He also owned over three hundred acres of land and mining claims in the Sierra and enjoyed weekend trips mining for gold with his buddies.
Never boring, generous and full of new ideas, Joe Brucia will be greatly missed. Joe leaves “in dolore” his friends, his wife Frances, children Louise, Larry and Francesca, as well as brother Frank, sister Mary Bonura, and six grandchildren.
10631 Vinedale Street, Sun Valley, CA 91352 - Phone (818) 767-3413 - Fax: (818) 767-1410
