Sarasota Opera

Sarasota Opera is a professional opera company in Sarasota, Florida, USA, which was founded as the Asolo Opera Guild and, until 1974, presented a visiting company's productions. Between 1974 and 1979, it set about mounting its own productions in the same venue until, in 1979, it acquired the Edwards Theatre, which became the Sarasota Opera House in 1984. The house underwent a further renovation in 2008, creating a 1,119-seat venue.

In addition to two or three operas in the popular repertoire, each season typically includes an opera as part of the long-running "Verdi Cycle", the company's planned presentations of every Verdi opera, and one in the "Masterworks Revival" series.

Initially bringing the Turnau Opera of Woodstock, New York to perform chamber-sized operas at the historic Asolo Theater on the grounds of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the guild then began mounting its own productions, also at the Asolo, in 1974, but when it acquired the Edwards Theatre in 1979, the company set about a rehabilitation of the old vaudeville and movie theater and opened it in 1984.

Under the artistic direction of Victor DeRenzi since 1982 and executive director Richard Russell, the company presents its Winter Opera Festival in February and March, usually offering 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, and in the same year, the company added its first fully staged fall production, Rossini's The Barber of Seville bringing the number of operas presented in a season to five. For the most part, the Fall operas have been popular favourites, but in 2012, it presented Daron Hagen's world premiere opera, Little Nemo in Slumberland.

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, including every one of his operas (as well as all alternative versions), all his orchestral and chamber music, as well as the Requiem. In recent years, the Verdi Cycle operas have included I due Foscari, Giovanna d'Arco, I Lombardi and Otello. In 2009, the company staged performances of the composer's Don Carlo in the four-act version of 1884 (the "La Scala" version) in French. At the time, this was the largest opera ever presented by the company.

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