Sarasota Opera To Present 'Opera Composers In Song'

On Friday, May 10 at 7:30 pm, the historic Sarasota Opera House will be filled with exquisite songs written by well-known opera composers. Soprano Elizabeth Tredent (the title roles in Rita and Susanna's Secret, Violetta in La traviata), tenor Matthew Vickers (Des Grieux in Manon Lescaut, Avito in The Love of Three Kings), and baritone Marco Nisticò (Giorgio Germont in La traviata, Amonasro in Aida) will be accompanied on the piano by John F. Spencer IV. The program will represent a musical journey through time-from a Mozart song set to the words of Goethe to a song Richard Strauss composed as a gift to his wife the day before their wedding in 1894. The songs will be performed in their original languages of Italian, French, German, and Russian, with translations provided.

Individual tickets start at $10 and are available at SarasotaOpera.org and in the Sarasota Opera Box Office. For more information on Opera Composers in Song as well as the upcoming 2019-2020 season-Verdi's Rigoletto, Puccini's La bohème, Gounod's Romeo & Juliet, Donizetti's The Elixir of Love, and Catalani's La Wally-visit SarasotaOpera.org, contact the Sarasota Opera Box Office at (941) 328-1300, or visit in person at 61 N. Pineapple Avenue, Sarasota, FL 34236.

Sarasota Opera is celebrating its 60th Season of bringing world-class opera to Florida's Gulf Coast. The company was launched in 1960, when a touring chamber opera company came to the historic 320-seat Asolo Theater on the grounds of Sarasota's Ringling Museum of Art. The following year the Asolo Opera Guild was formed to present the season. By 1974 the Asolo Opera was mounting its own productions at the theater. Recognizing the need for a theater more conducive to full-scale opera, the company purchased the former A.B. Edwards Theater which in 1984 (as the Sarasota Opera House) became home to the newly renamed Sarasota Opera. The building underwent a $20 million renovation and rehabilitation in 2007 enhancing audience amenities, while updating the technical facilities, including increasing the size of the orchestra pit. The theater, which reopened in March 2008, has been called "one of America's finest venues for opera" by Musical America.

Since 1983, the company has been under the artistic leadership of Victor DeRenzi and administrative leadership of Executive Director Richard Russell since 2012. Sarasota Opera has garnered international attention with its Masterwork Revivals Series, which presents neglected works of artistic merit, as well as the Verdi Cycle, completed in 2016, that made Sarasota Opera the only opera company in the world to present all of Verdi's works. Recognizing the importance of training, Maestro DeRenzi founded the Apprentice and Studio Artists programs. Sarasota Opera also maintains a commitment to education through its Explorations in Opera performances for local schools and the industry-leading Sarasota Youth Opera program.

Sarasota Opera is sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Programs are supported in part by an award from the Tourist Development Tax through the Board of County Commissioners, the Tourist Development Council and the Sarasota County Arts Council. Additional funding is provided by the City of Sarasota and the County of Sarasota.

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