Verdi and rarities return in 2017-18 season

The Sarasota Opera, which bills itself as Giusseppe “Verdi’s American Home,” will be filled with the sound of his music again after a one-year break as part of the 2017-18 season. The schedule also includes the launch of a new series highlighting Italian master composers, several Sarasota premieres and one world premiere the company commissioned.

The Sarasota Opera became the only company in the world to produce every note Verdi ever wrote during a 28-year cycle that was completed at the end of the 2016 season. The composer was given a rest for the current season that opens Feb. 11, but his music will return with a revival of “La Traviata” in the fall. It was last produced in the fall of 2009.

Artistic Director Victor DeRenzi and Executive Director Richard Russell, who announced the new season at a news conference Friday, said in an earlier interview that the company needs to provide a variety beyond Verdi. “We want to have balance and variety. We’re trying to create seasons that have a good mix,” Russell said.

The announcement ceremony was briefly interrupted by "protestors" — mostly apprentice singers with the company — chanting slogans and carrying signs demanding the return of Verdi. They had earlier been marching outside the Opera House as patrons arrived.

But the new season will mark the start of a new initiative, Beyond Verdi: Italian Masters Series, featuring works by other composers that were written either late in Verdi’s career or after his death that Verdi may have influenced directly or indirectly. “It’s kind of the logical answer to what comes after Verdi,” DeRenzi said.

There also will be three Sarasota debuts, beginning with the company's first production of Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut,” which DeRenzi said is “one of those pieces that people have asked for over and over.”

“Manon” is about a young girl who falls for a wealthy man who supports her in the lap of luxury. She gets in trouble, however, when she decides to go back to her first love and is punished by being deported to the Louisiana territory. Elizabeth Tredent sang an aria from the opera at the ceremony. 

Another frequently requested opera, Bellini’s 1831 “Norma,” will also have its Sarasota debut in the 2018 winter season. Bellini, along with Donizetti and Rossini were major influences on Verdi’s career. “Norma” is about a Druid priestess who is in love with a Roman proconsul, a representative of the Angels, who has fallen for another vestal virgin.

The winter season of 2018 also includes two extremes of the familiar and unfamiliar. It will include Bizet’s “Carmen,” one of the most popular operas in the world, which was last heard in Sarasota in 2012. The season will end with the Sarasota debut of the far less familiar “Tiefland” by Eugen d’Albert.

“It is basically a German verismo opera,” DeRenzi said of “Tiefland.” “It has the kind of passion of ‘Pagliacci’ or ‘Cavalleria rusticana.’ It is an extremely melodic, passionate, dramatic story about a shepherd who marries the landowner’s mistress in order to have her stay around, but then the shepherd falls in love with the woman, which has a tragic effect,” DeRenzi said. The opera had its premiere in 1904, and was first produced in the United States at the Metropolitan Opera in 1907 and was not heard again in this country until 1995 when it was produced by the Washington Opera.

 Helena Brown sang a brief aria from “Tiefland.”

“Every year we try to do an opera you can’t see any other place because people come specifically to see these rare pieces,” DeRenzi said. “They come for the long weekend and we want to do something that our audience would like and that people would come from afar to see. In the last few years it was always a Verdi opera, but now we can move on to something else.”

In the fall, the Sarasota Youth Opera will present the world premiere of “Rootabaga Country,” which was commissioned by the company from composer Rachel J. Peters, based on stories by Carl Sandburg. It will have two performances in November.

Sarasota Opera 2017-18 season

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941-328-1300; sarasotaopera.org

“La traviata,” Nov. 3-21

“Rootabaga Country,” Nov. 11-12 (Youth Opera premiere)

“Manon Lescaut,” Feb. 10-March 23

“Carmen,” Feb. 17-March 24

“Norma,” March 3-24

“Tiefland,” March 10-25