San Francisco Opera | 9,625 followers on LinkedIn. Founded in 1923, San Francisco Opera is a nonprofit dedicated to fostering innovative art for the 21st century. | Founded in 1923, San Francisco Opera is the oldest surviving opera company on the West Coast and a leader in arts education and innovation. It all started, according to legend, over a game of poker. In his travels across the United States, the Neapolitan conductor Gaetano Merola had noticed that San Francisco audiences hungered for opera.