Sarasota Opera 2012-2013 Season will feature Regional and World Premieres!

Sarasota Opera is pleased to announce its 2012 – 2013 Fall and Winter Seasons!

2012 Fall Season
The 2012 Fall Sarasota Opera Season will open with Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto [rih-go-leht-to], based off of Victor Hugo’s play “Le Roi s’Amuse” and the opera chosen to be the first performed in the newly renovated opera house when it re-opened in 2008. The story follows a hunchbacked jester as he tries to shield his daughter Gilda from the evils of the world only to have it unveiled that she is in love with the lascivious Duke of Mantua who has deceived her to win her heart. Rigoletto will open on October 26, 2012 and run through November 12, 2012.

In addition, the fall season will include the world premiere performance of Sarasota Youth Opera’s newest commission, Little Nemo in Slumberland, music by Daron Hagen and libretto by J.D. McClatchy.

Little Nemo in Slumberland will be a Co-Production with the University of Kentucky Opera Theater and will utilize a new leading edge, innovative theater technology, SCRIBE (Self-Contained Rapidly Integratable Background Environment), that was piloted at the University of Kentucky. This technology, which has been successfully used in productions at the University of Kentucky Opera Theater and The Atlanta Opera, will help meet the creative challenge presented by bringing such a fantasy based story to life. There will be two performances on November 10 and 11, 2012.

2013 Winter Festival
The 2013 Sarasota Opera Winter Festival will open with the Sarasota Opera premiere of Giacomo Puccini’s vocally extravagant final opera Turandot [too-ran-dough] which features some of the composers most glorious music including the famous tenor aria “Nessum Dorma” (None shall sleep). Set in Ancient China, Turandot is based off an ancient Persian fairy tale which tells the story of a beautiful princess who men travelled all over the world to win the heart of by solving three riddles. Answer incorrectly and lose your head. Answer correctly and melt the heart of the ice princess Turandot.

Following Turandot will be much in demand return of Georges Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers (Les Pêcheurs de perles [lay peh-share deh peh-rl]), a proven favorite of Sarasota Opera audiences. Last seen in 2003, The Pearl Fishers features the famously infectious Act I duet for tenor and baritone “Au fond du temple saint”, in which our two heroes, Nadir and Zurga, reaffirm their pact of eternal friendship despite their mutual love for the priestess Leila.

Sarasota Opera will present the world premiere of a new critical edition (transcribed directly from Verdi’s manuscript) of Giuseppe Verdi’s second opera A King for a Day (Un giorno di regno) [oon jor-no di ray-no]), Verdi’s first comic opera (his only other comedy was his final opera Falstaff). A King for a Day is based on the play Le faux Stanislas by Alexandre Vincent Pineu-Duval. A true Verdi rarity, A King for a Day will be the 29th installment in the company’s continuing Verdi Cycle.

Of this production, Maestro DeRenzi says, “It is part of our artistic vision to present all of Verdi’s rarely performed works along with the more mainstream pieces. Our audience has come to recognize and appreciate the artistic value of these early works, and we are proud to be one of the only opera companies in the United States to present them.” 2013 will also mark the 200th anniversary of Verdi’s birth.

Finally, Sarasota Opera will present Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men as a continuation of the American Classics Series. Premiered in 1969 at Seattle Opera, Floyd adapted the opera from the novella by John Steinbeck and wrote both the music and libretto himself. The opera stays faithful to Steinbeck’s story of two workers, George Milton and Lennie Small, struggling for work during the depression era as they pursue their hopes to achieve the American dream of owning their own farm one day. However, when a hard and cruel world forces them down a different path, George and Lennie are forced to say goodbye to the bright horizon they had envisioned for themselves.

As was done with the first two American Classics Series Operas, the 2011 production of The Crucible and the 2012 production of Vanessa, Sarasota Opera will design a series of education events around this production Of Mice and Men to help familiarize and educate the Sarasota Opera audience about this important work.

The four productions will run in rotation from February 9 through March 24, 2013.