David Kadarauch, Principal Cellist of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra for the last 43 years, was born in Washington, D.C. and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Vienna Academy on a Fulbright Scholarship. A finalist and prize winner in the Prague International Competition for Violoncello in 1970, David also won the Philadelphia Orchestra Youth Auditions in 1968, and performed this same Saint-Saëns concerto with that orchestra at the beginning of his career 50 years ago.
Married with two grown children, he divides his time between Mendocino and the Bay area.