In celebration of Women’s History Month, AGMA’s Communications Coordinator sat down with longtime San Francisco Opera Chorus member and union leader Sally Mouzon to reflect on a career shaped by care, mentorship, and collective action. Over three decades with SFO and in leadership roles within AGMA, Mouzon has become affectionately known as an “Opera Mom,” a title that speaks to her deep commitment to showing up for her colleagues. In this conversation, she shares how small acts of kindness, a lifelong belief in labor solidarity, and a steadfast dedication to community have defined her journey.
Across her 30 years with the San Francisco Opera (SFO) Chorus and within AGMA, Sally Mouzon has worn many hats: Area Committee Chair, Western Region Vice President of AGMA, but most importantly to her, Opera Mom. A title well earned from years of carpooling to colleagues’ homes, taking people to doctors’ appointments, and consistently showing up for everyone around her, as she always had.
“The ‘Opera Mom’ thing is partly from being the go-to person and partly that I’ve always tried to welcome people and show them the ropes. It’s simply who I am,” Sally says. “I have only one biological daughter, but I feel like I have so many more. Interestingly, my own daughter doesn’t call me ‘Mom.’ I didn’t call my mother ‘Mom’ either. But at the opera house, it works, to the point that I’ve actually received Mother’s Day cards.”
The instinct to take care of the SFO members dates back to her first rehearsal there. A longtime SFO member noticed how confused and lost Sally seemed and invited her to sit with her; a small action that meant everything to Sally because she made room for her.
“A longtime member of the section asked what part I was singing, and when I told her, she simply said, ‘Come sit by me.’ We became dear friends—she’s passed now—but that one gesture meant everything to me. I was brand new and completely at sea. She took care of me in that moment. I try to be that person for others,” she says.
Now, as far as her leadership roles within AGMA, the roots of solidarity took hold early in her life. Sally’s father spent his career as a labor attorney at the U.S. Department of Labor, and growing up involved visiting the Frances Perkins Building and instinctively absorbing the idea that collective action is a force for good. That inheritance didn’t end with her but was passed down to her daughter, born in 2001 and raised in a household where solidarity was both a topic of conversation and a way of life.
“There is a perception that it’s ‘unions versus management,’ and that management is a benevolent force that would treat workers wonderfully even without a union. That is nonsense. Think of A Bug’s Life—the ants together, thousands of them, defeat the grasshoppers because they’re stronger collectively,” she explains. “When you knit something together, it’s strong, stretchy, and malleable in ways a single strand of yarn never could be. We are stronger when we are together.”
Sally Mouzon has never drawn a line between the stage, the rehearsal room, and the bargaining table. More than 30 seasons in, now among the most senior members of the SFO Chorus, she still carries that first moment with her, the relief of someone making space beside them. It is a feeling she has spent a career passing on. Because in this work, in this community, no one should have to stand alone. Sometimes the deepest act of solidarity is also the simplest: when someone walks into a room unsure of where they belong, you make room and say, “Sit with me.”