Sarasota Opera

Sarasota Opera House, late March 2008, after complete interior and exterior renovation

Sarasota Opera is a professional opera company in Sarasota, Florida, USA, which owns and performs in the now-renovated 1,119-seat Sarasota Opera House. The 2011-2012 season is currently featuring Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in the fall. The 2012 Winter festival will include Bizet’s Carmen, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Verdi’s Otello, and Samuel Barber’s Vanessa.

Company History

The company was founded as the Asolo Opera Guild which presented the Turnau Opera of Woodstock, New York in chamber-sized opera at the historic Asolo Theater on the grounds of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. In 1974 the guild began mounting its own productions at the Asolo. After acquiring the Edwards Theatre in 1979, the company set about a rehabilitation of the old vaudeville and movie theater and opened as the Sarasota Opera in 1984.

Sarasota Opera House, late March 2008.

Under the artistic direction of Victor DeRenzi since 1982 and executive director Susan T. Danis since 1999, the company presents its Winter Opera Festival, in February and March, usually four fully staged operas with the Sarasota Opera Orchestra. The repertoire includes standard works as well as lesser known operas. In March 2008, the Sarasota Opera House reopened after a $20 million renovation with Verdi's Rigoletto. In 2008 the company added its first fully staged fall production, bringing the number of operas presented in a season to five. for the most part, the Fall operas have been popular favourites.

Characteristic features of the company

• Verdi Cycle

One of the company's longest standing initiatives is the Verdi Cycle, an effort which began in 1989 to perform all of the works of Giuseppe Verdi, both operatic, including all alternative versions of the operas, and incidental music.^[1] In recent years, the Verdi Cycle operas have included Rigoletto, I due Foscari, La traviata, Giovanna d'Arco, and I Lombardi. In 2009, the company staged performances of the composer's Don Carlos in the four-act version of 1884 (the "La Scala" version), performed in French as he conceived and wrote it. This was the largest opera ever performed at the Sarasota Opera House.

After presenting I Lombardi in 2011 and Otello in 2012, the remaining Verdi operas to be performed in future seasons include Un giorno di regno, Jérusalem (a revised version of I Lombardi), Don Carlos - the original Paris version, La battaglia di Legnano, and Aida. These operas will be performed by the completion of the cycle in 2016 which will distinguish Sarasota Opera as the only company in the world to have performed every note Giuseppe Verdi wrote.

• The Masterworks Revival Series,^[2]

presents neglected works of artistic merit. Operas presented in this cycle have included Alfredo Catalani's La Wally, Carl Nielsen's Maskarade, Engelbert Humperdinck's Königskinder, Stanisław Moniuszko's Halka, and Mascagni's L'amico Fritz.

The company also runs an Apprentice Program and a Studio Artists Program. Both programs provide young singers with additional training and performance opportunities in the chorus or other small roles in the company's productions.

• American Classics Series

The 2010-2011 opera season marked the beginning of Sarasota Opera's newest initiative, the American Classics Series, through which Sarasota Opera has made the commitment to produce one opera by an American composer each season. Robert Ward's opera, The Crucible based on the play by Arthur Miller, served as this new series inaugural production and was received with great acclaim. The 2011-2012 Festival Season will feature Samuel Barber's opera, Vanessa.

• Youth Opera

The SarasotaYouth Opera program, begun in 1984, is a comprehensive training program designed for young people ages 8 to 18. The program admits all who apply, regardless of skill level, and provides instruction in the musical and theatrical aspects of opera. In recent years, the Sarasota Youth Opera has mounted world premieres on Sarasota's stage, the best-known being The Language of Birds, and gave the United States premiere of Canadian composer Dean Burry's opera The Hobbit in 2008. In 2010, the Sarasota Youth Opera presented the opera The Black Spider by Judith Weir

Sarasota Opera House

For a more detailed article on the opera house, see Sarasota Opera House

Recognizing the need for a larger theater with an orchestra pit, the guild purchased the then-closed A. B. Edwards Theatre, which had been renamed as the Florida Theatre in December 1936. The theater had been built in 1926 by an important early resident of Sarasota, Arthur Britton Edwards, as a versatile performance venue that could be adapted for vaudeville or as a movie house. The guild members renovated the building beginning in 1982. The next year the A. B. Edwards Theatre was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and was reopened as the Sarasota Theatre of the Arts in 1984. The name was changed to the Sarasota Opera House a few years later. From 2007 until the opening of the new season on 1 March 2008, the opera house was extensively remodeled and updated throughout its interior and exterior. The $20 million renovations included a gutting of the auditorium, resulting in a newly configured seating plan, expansion of the public areas and Opera Club on the second level, the opening up of the atrium to reveal a newly installed skylight system which had existed in the 1926 building. Seating has been expanded to 1,119.

References

Notes

1. ^ The Verdi Cycle: operas performed
2. ^ Masterworks Revival Series; operas performed

External links

• Sarasota Opera Home Page