Sarasota Opera Apprentice and Studio Artists Present Free Concert at Venice Library

Celebrating the opening of Verdi's Nabucco and the ongoing 60th Anniversary Season, Apprentice and
Studio Artists will perform arias and songs of early Verdi operas

March 7, 2019

Contact:
Lana Mullen, Communications Coordinator
(941) 328-1322
[email protected]

 

Sarasota, FL—At 12 noon on Tuesday March 12th, the music of early Verdi will be performed by the Apprentice and Studio Artists of Sarasota Opera in a free concert to be held in the Community Room at the William H. Jervey Jr. Venice Public Library, located at 300 Nokomis Ave South, Venice, FL 34285. Selections include songs and arias from Ernani, The Two Foscari, and The Battle of Legnano.

On Saturday March 2nd, Verdi’s Nabucco opened to great praise at the Sarasota Opera House. Performances will continue through Sunday March 24th. Individual tickets start at only $19 and are available at SarasotaOpera.org and from the Sarasota Opera Box Office. There will be free pre-performance introductions to the opera 45 minutes before the start of each performance in Felding Hall. Nabucco is sung in Italian with English translations above the stage.

For more information on Nabucco as well as the rest of the 2019 season—Puccini’s Turandot and Mozart’s The Magic Flute (now playing), and a comic double bill: Donizetti’s Rita and Wolf-Ferrari’s Susanna’s Secret, (opening March 9), 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.

About Sarasota Opera

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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Sarasota Opera • 61 N. Pineapple Avenue • Sarasota, FL 34236 • (941) 366-8450 www.sarasotaopera.org #End