About Donald Pippin

The musical career of Donald Pippin, Artistic Director and founder of Pocket Opera, has spanned over six decades and as many time zones. Born in Zebulon, North Carolina and educated at Harvard University, Donald began his career as a pianist/accompanist at Balanchine's School for American Ballet in New York City. He moved to San Francisco in 1952 and has been an integral part of that city's artistic life since then. Audiences have followed him loyally from his start at the 'hungry i' and Opus One in North Beach, through nearly two decades of presenting a weekly chamber music series at the Old Spaghetti Factory, to his present-day fame as the genius behind one of San Francisco's most popular operatic institutions.

Donald's first translation came in 1968, in the course of preparing Mozart's one-act opera Bastien und Bastienne for performance as part of his chamber music series. The opera, and his singing translation of it, were immediate successes with San Francisco audiences. From that point on, Donald dedicated himself to the task of producing singable, intelligible, and literate English versions of both well-loved classics and lesser-known gems of operatic literature. His repertoire has grown to include over sixty translations, many of which have been used by the Washington Opera at the Kennedy Center, the San Francisco Opera Center, the San Diego Opera, the Juilliard School of Music, and the Aspen Music Festival, to name a few.