Sarasota Opera announces 2016-17 season

For 28 years, the Sarasota Opera’s primary focus was on the works of Giuseppe Verdi. As anyone in this part of the world who’s even remotely interested in opera knows, the Sarasota Opera last season became the first company in the world to perform every note that Verdi wrote for performance.

But the Sarasota Opera has always been about more than Verdi, and tickets have just gone on sale for its first Verdi-free season since the Reagan administration.

The company has always programmed an intriguing blend of the best-known operas and some less familiar ones. This year, there’s a new emphasis on less-familiar works. A program called “Sarasota Firsts” will highlight operas that have never been performed in Sarasota.

The fall season kicks off in October, with one of those “Sarasota First” operas, Gaetano Donizetti’s comic “Don Pasquale.” Performances are Oct. 28 and 30, and Nov. 2, 7, 10 and 13.

The other work in winter season is the Sarasota Youth Opera’s “The Secret World of Og.” It’s the U.S. premiere of an opera by Dean Burry.

The opera is an adaptation of a popular children’s book by Pierre Berton. Burry, who lives in Canada, will travel to Sarasota for the production. Previous productions have had piano accompaniment; the Sarasota Youth Opera commissioned a full orchestration by Burry for this production. It’s set for a matinee and evening performance on Nov. 12.

The fall season is a relatively new addition to the Sarasota Opera — this will be just the ninth — and it always features a limited program. The Winter Festival season is now 58 years old, and it’s much more extensive. The 2017 winter season features four full opera productions: “Madama Butterfly” by Giacomo Puccini (Feb. 11-March 25), “The Italian Girl in Algiers” by Giaochino Rossini (Feb. 18-March 25), “Dialogues of the Carmelites” by Francis Poulenc (March 4-18) and “The Love of Three Kings” by Italo Montemezzi (March 11-22). The last two are “Sarasota Firsts.”

Besides those fully staged grand operas, the season also features three concerts. The Fall Opera Showcase (Nov. 6) features artists from the winter opera season performing some arias and ensembles. The Artists Choice Concert (March 19) has principal and studio artists performing pieces of their own choosing. And the Spring Opera Spectacular (March 26) has winter season artists performing arias, scenes and ensembles with the Sarasota Opera Chorus and Orchestra under the direction of Victor DeRenzi.

Tickets for the operas and the Spring Opera Spectacular start at $19. For the Fall Opera Showcase and and Artists Choice concert, tickets start at $10.

All the foreign-language operas are sung with English translations in supertitles.

The Sarasota Opera House is at 61 N. Pineapple Ave., Sarasota. Call 941-328-1300, or go to sarasotaopera.org.

This story was originally published August 5, 2016 at 4:44 PM with the headline "Sarasota Opera announces 2016-17 season."