[music] - Everybody okay?

We're fine.

Learn Italian in one lesson that's pretty good.

Who's in here?

Virginia.

I have a note for you for the last act before you go.

Remind me.

- 15 minutes call.

15 minutes to the top of that class.

[music] [music] [music] - Is this a convention in here?

Good.

Everything all right?

- Are you standing there trying to look like me?

Me?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

You're successful.

I know you'll be wonderful.

- All right.

Hello, maestro.

[laughter] What?

- Oh, I've seen you eight times today, That's all.

[music] [laughter] [music] [music] [applause] [music] [music] [music] - In 1902, train service between Tampa and Sarasota began.

This provided connections to northern metropolitan areas like New York and Chicago.

It spawned the rise of tourism, and.

The land boom of the 1920s brought wealthy tycoons and socialites from up north and created demand for entertainment and culture.

[music] A. B. Edwards knew an opportunity when he saw one.

[music] The crown jewel of the city was to become a grand theater, a landmark that has endured 100 years.

A tribute to architecture, performing arts and the enduring spirit of community.

[music] The Sarasota Opera House.

[music] - When we think about the Opera House being formed in 1926, it's a little bit of a misnomer because you can find in looking at a lot of frontier towns.

They have opera houses, and I know myself, when I first heard there was an opera house here in 1926, that sounded a little strange.

It doesn't mean the same thing.

It means today it meant a theater.

And so it had general entertainment, not Italian opera entertainment.

Ultimately, this opera house became an opera house.

- What's interesting about the development in terms of the urban form is it's really three blocks.

And the first block when you enter was an open air atrium, three stories.

So they were emulating other places in Europe that were could have been on the Mediterranean, if you will.

And so when you stepped inside, you still have that atrium.

It's now been enclosed.

But when you stepped inside, there were eight shops on the first floor.

The second level were a number of offices, I think approximately 10 or 12.

And then the floor that we're on, the upper floor had residential.

So it was really a mixed use kind of urban development.

It was that second block that housed the lobby and the theater itself.

So the Edwards Theater is named for Arthur Britton or A. B. Edwards.

He was a prominent civic figure.

He was the first mayor of the consolidated City of Sarasota.

He helped create the county of Sarasota.

He served as the first head of the Chamber of Commerce for the City of Sarasota, and he saw.

With the arrival of the train, most people came to Sarasota by boat.

Until about 1903 is when the train arrived.

And he saw this kind of wave of new people moving.

And then there was a need for an entertainment hall, a venue.

- You know, here's a guy that was born in a log cabin.

True Horatio Alger story had no education to speak of, and he just rose through the ranks to become one of the, you know, in the pantheon of historic Sarasota figures.

He was at the top.

Well, Sarasota was booming at the time.

You know, he helped lay the foundation for the boom, but it was booming when the Edwards opened.

The boom started, probably with the opening of the Miramar Apartments and hotel in 1923 and 1924, and all at once Sarasota was thriving with people and construction was going on.

- And you have a number of really critical civic structures that are being built.

First is perhaps courtesan Venetian for House of John, Venetian dialect for House of John.

That's the John and Mable Ringling mansion, one of the last great Gilded Age mansions.

They worked with an architect based out of New York, Dwight James Baum.

Baum was trained as a traditional classicist architect, and in the case of that particular structure, they wanted to emulate Venice.

So it's Venetian Gothic palazzo on, um, on the Sarasota Bay.

Other buildings that were built.

Baum also did our courthouse that was done right around the same time or opened right around the same time as the Edwards Theater.

We had the Orange Blossom Hotel, which was one of the first tall or skyscraper buildings, if you will.

Um, and lower Main Street and all of these buildings were really done in a Mediterranean Revival style, just like the Edwards Theater.

- The Edwards Theater when Mr.

Edwards built it, it was designed to be a marketing tool for him to make Sarasota downtown seem more exciting.

Well, they achieved that by having first rate entertainment in this venue.

And one of the first patrons was John Ringling.

John Ringling used to come on a regular basis to this theater.

He also funded the performance of the Chicago Opera Company here at this theater.

The story happens that we're told, is that they wouldn't start until Mr.

Ringling showed up with a check.

So it was a place for the the people who really defined Sarasota, John Ringling.

Charles Ringling, all of these people really saw this as an important venue.

[music] - A building permit was granted in 1925, less than four months later, on April 10th, 1926.

The Edwards Theater opened on North Pineapple Avenue in downtown Sarasota.

[music] It was a stunning achievement at a moment in history when the flame of the Roaring 20s was beginning to flicker.

The quiet little fishing village on Sarasota Bay had stepped onto the world stage.

[music] And what a stage it was.

[music] - Edwards envisioned this as a as a meeting place, and it's fascinating to do the research on the early performances because there was such an incredible variety.

When the theater opened, silent films ruled, which is why, of course, Edwards included that amazing organ as part of the theater, because the organ accompanied the silent films.

So all the all the greats came here uh, Chaplin, Clara Bow, Rudolph Valentino, all of those films were shown here.

There were two opera companies that toured here, the San Carlo Opera Company and the Shanghai Opera Company from New York.

Of course, as time passed, they added the the equipment to be able to show the talkies.

And The Jazz Singer was the first movie that had sound.

And it was a huge hit and showed for several nights and really revived the movie going audience.

[music] - Only five months after the theater opened, a catastrophic hurricane packing 150 mile per hour winds made landfall in Miami.

[music] It cut a path of destruction northwest across the state through Sarasota.

[music] The theater was heavily damaged.

The real estate market collapsed, and a cycle of booms and busts that would plague the city and the theater for the rest of the 20th century had begun.

[music] - So Edwards had invested all of this money into his theater, and it was his money.

And he had at the same time also built a lavish home on Siesta Key.

So he was really tied up money wise.

And then when the real estate crash happened, he ended up selling for a song.

The Edwards Theater.

He remained as manager of the theater for a few years after he sold it.

And then, I believe in the mid to late 30s, they changed the name of the theater from the Edwards Theater to the Florida Theater, which, as I understand it, kind of miffed him.

You know, kind of hurt him actually, that they changed the name.

- After all that growth.

The Great Depression hits and people lose their livelihoods, they lose their resource, their financial resources.

But it seems that many stay and that we don't have any kind of major de-population of the community and the arts continued.

The Sarasota Arts Association continues to encourage artists to produce artwork.

The major institutions seem to still be running through that time period.

The educational institutions are there and there's the continuing attempt to keep it going.

[applause] [applause] [music] - The theater remained open throughout the Depression and World War Two.

[music] [music] Growth and prosperity returned.

Sarasota was back on stage, bigger and better than ever.

[music] - At that time, in the 1950s, the Edwards had become the Florida Theater.

Well, when The Greatest Show on Earth was filmed here, all of a sudden the focus of America was on Sarasota.

They had some of the most spectacular movie stars in Hollywood.

Here they had Dorothy Lamour, Charlton Heston, Charlton Heston, Lyle Bettger, Betty Hutton, Cecil B. DeMille.

The great director was here, uh, Cornel Wilde.

- I met quite a few people besides my father that was in it.

But people that spoke about their roles.

Jackie LeClair, who passed away not too long ago, he doubled for Cornel Wilde in that movie.

And Norma Fox also doubled in the movie.

And, uh, yeah, it, uh, I wish I was a fly on the wall back then.

It must have been incredible.

- The Greatest Show on earth, of course, was filmed here in Sarasota at the circus lot.

And so when they had the opening, there was a parade down Main Street of, of all the animals and floats, and they put a tent on the outside of the theater.

And there were animals to welcome the people into the theater.

So it was a huge deal.

When the opening happened.

- It became something for me on Saturday mornings.

When they offered free admission to a double feature at the Edwards for six Royal Crown bottle caps, you could get in for free.

And I remember many years really kind of falling in love with movies.

And, uh, and I became an arts reporter later.

I'm not sure if that was some deep seated memory of those days that influenced me, but it was taking me to these exciting new worlds.

- We knew it was only Saturday mornings that we could go, and all the kids and my friends, we all got excited.

And besides the the cartoons, it was such a beautiful theater, you know?

And that image, uh, never, never left your memory.

And just going in there, you know, we grew up on simple means.

And, uh, so going into a theater like that, it was like, wow.

- The most vivid memory.

I didn't go in myself, but my sister did in the mid 50s to see Elvis Presley at the, at the opera House, the Edwards Theater.

It was known then and I was like 4 or 5, six years old.

I vaguely knew who Elvis Presley was, and I don't really think Elvis Presley was Elvis Presley then he was becoming Elvis Presley.

But I do remember my sister and her friends used to have little sock hops up in her upstairs bedroom and play rock and roll and play Elvis, and she was just determined to go.

And my parents weren't sure what to make of this Elvis guy and said no at first, but she finally won them over.

[music] - The good times were rolling again.

Florida Theater was the most celebrated venue in town, a national reputation, an audience that spanned from the salons of the wealthy to working class kids at Saturday morning matinees.

[music] [applause] [music] [applause] But the doors did not open equally for all.

Sarasota was a segregated community from the Jim Crow era to the building boom of the 1920s.

Buildings and roads were disproportionately built on the backs of black men who were paid nothing.

[music] Florida's convict leasing laws allowed the use of free labor, provided mostly by black men arrested on trumped up charges of vagrancy.

their choice in court was to go to jail, pay a fine that they couldn't afford, or work it off on a public chain gang or a private construction site.

[music] - During that period of time, in the say from about 1923 through 1926, and even some projects that were on the drawing boards before the bust, a lot of the work was being done by black men.

Uh, they were being rounded up almost wholesale, being charged with idleness and put on either put on the work gang because they couldn't pay the fine or sent to jail.

So most of them opted to be on the work gang.

And consequently, many of the iconic buildings that we have still today were built by the black population.

- When the theater first opened, they made a point of saying in the paper that people of color were not allowed in the theater.

But come 1931, a show called, "The Pearly Gates."

toured here, and it was advertised as an all Negro cast, and they allowed people of color to attend the show.

But they made a point of saying they had to buy their tickets in the back alley.

And they were they had to go up the the side staircase and were only allowed to sit in the balcony.

So and it was very clear in the advertising they were letting their white patrons know that, you know, they wouldn't have to interact, which which I found so disturbing to read.

It was, it's a reminder of how recent that that time is.

- Florida movie theater.

Was here and I grew up with it here.

At the same time, there was another one called The Ritz, and we knew them as the white movie theaters.

We weren't allowed to come here, and my mother was one that would push those buttons when those buttons were to be pushed.

So I never, I never forget she got us dressed because you just, you know, it ain't like nowadays you go downtown, you just wear whatever you got on.

Back in those days, people dressed to go to places like this.

And she said, we're going to the movies.

I said, oh yeah.

She said, don't tell your daddy.

And she knew daddy wasn't going for that.

Especially I found out with the rule Once we got here because when we got here, we stood right.

You know, where we came in that door.

We stood right there.

She walked over there to where you got your ticket, came back to us, and we had to go to that door in that alley, which opens up to some stairs.

And when you look up those stairs, those stairs go up to the balcony.

And that's where we had to sit.

I'll never forget that.

And if I had told my daddy that that happened, mama would have been in some trouble.

- That racism continued here at the theater because we know that there was a second staircase, an exit from the balcony.

We now know when it was built, it was built as a second staircase up to the offices that were on the second floor.

And it was to so that those people could get into their offices without having to open the theater.

But then they used that staircase for people of color to come to movies here when it became the Florida Theater, and they were showing movies and they had to go up that staircase, buy their tickets separately, and only sit in the balcony.

- It was a divided society that this was a segregated town as the state was.

And so this was a white theater.

The people who worked here, probably some of the members of the African American community, but it was very much aimed at the dominant society.

And we don't want to lose sight of a society that was still wrestling with division, even though so small scale that people did know each other.

Yet they treated them as different.

[music] - As the post war decade of the 50s ended and the 1960s set in unresolved social inequities like civil rights and economic trends like urban flight took their toll on downtown Sarasota.

[music] Once again, the pendulum was swinging from boom to bust.

The Florida Theater was a high profile symbol of the decline, from a segregated showcase for The Greatest Show on Earth and Elvis to a decrepit landmark past its prime.

The Florida theater was having a mid-life crisis.

[music] - Well, the decline began sort of in the late 50s.

Live performances weren't as prevalent.

Downtown started to decline.

People started not to live as much here and is certainly by the 60s it was an evident decline.

Like in much of America, people were moving to the suburbs, there were shopping malls and and things like that that were drawing people away from downtown.

So the real downtown of Sarasota really underwent a really dramatic decline from the 1960s until the early 70s.

In this theater closed in 1972.

There wasn't much happening in downtown Sarasota at that time, and it really was in decline, so much so that by the 1980s, the city of Sarasota declared downtown Sarasota blighted and a slum.

So the theater was owned by somebody who was a parishioner at St.

Martha's Church.

And when he died, he left it to St.

Martha's.

So they were looking, frankly, to unload it, and they were going to sell it to somebody who was going to tear it down and turn it into a parking lot.

Well, there was a couple, Dwayne and Patricia Glenn.

They were running a company called the Radio Engineering Institute.

Well, they came in, they talked to St.

Martha's, they did a tour of the theater and they decided to buy it.

The theater was in a day of being torn down.

There was a wrecking ball in the parking lot next door, ready to tear down the theater during the 1970s.

The front of the theater housed offices, and one of the groups that had an office in this theater was the Oslo Opera Guild.

When the Glens were running the Radio Engineering Institute, the folks at the Opera Guild discovered that they were going to have to leave the Oslo Theater.

So they contacted the Glens and asked them if they would be interested in selling the theater, and they were.

So in 1979, the Oslo Opera Guild bought the theater from the Glens for $173,000, and they began the process of turning it into an opera house.

[music] - And so the opera house was born.

Not built for opera, not fit for public safety, not set in a desirable location, but nonetheless saved from the wrecking ball and adopted by a dedicated and caring group of opera loving guardians.

[music] Nearly 50 years after opening first the Edwards, then the Florida Theater, and now the opera House literally got a new lease on life.

[music] - In 1981, I heard through a friend that Sarasota Opera, which was then called the Oslo Opera, was looking for an artistic director.

I really wasn't sure I wanted to come here, because the company at that time did not have a very good reputation, but I was interested in what could be with the company because up until I got here, the company performed at the old what is now called the historic Asolo Theater.

Uh, and I knew the company would be entering a new space.

Being the opera house, and that there was nothing that people had to hold on to, Viktor says.

- I was the first one to write a story about him when he.

When he came to town, and I was impressed immediately by his enthusiasm and vision and excitement about opera, and as I say, it was an excitement that I didn't have at that time.

And I think it was infectious.

And it made an opera goer out of me.

- As we found out that Viktor is to the nth degree, a person who checks out all the music and examines all the scores to to the best of his ability to do what the composer wanted.

And that's exactly what this committee wanted.

Someone who stood the stood the ground of the composers and would do a wonderful job doing it, and could also relate to the people in the audience by personality.

- After I met everybody, I was brought into the theater and when I entered this theater, I thought this could be a place for an opera company.

I saw there weren't any any chairs in the opera house.

The theater was had a lot of construction to be done for it, but I thought if I have an opera house like this and I can work in an opera house like this, I could hopefully build this company and also help build the city.

- So really, 1984 was a seminal year in downtown Sarasota, because with this opera house opening up and becoming a destination in downtown, it sparked a revival of this downtown Sarasota.

And over the next decade or so, it changed immeasurably.

- Yeah.

People ask me all the time, why did you have second thoughts about staying in your hometown?

But I was working for a great paper at the time.

The Herald Tribune was owned by the New York Times.

So the chance to stay and to get to know artists and opera singers and ballet dancers and actors and write about what they did became a really enriching experience for me.

- It certainly was an artistic hub, and I think it attracted a lot of different businesses and organizations to the downtown area.

Um, people hadn't been spending a lot of time downtown and with the opera, the opera company itself, and also people who were coming in to rent the space meant that more people with artistic interests were coming to Sarasota Opera.

And it's just it was just the beginning of a tremendous growth in downtown Sarasota.

[music] - And so the adventure of a lifetime began.

[music] A young aspiring conductor from New York.

[music] A crumbling theater on the verge of being condemned.

[music] A company of audacious dreamers.

[music] And the genius of opera to inspire them.

[music] - The plan was that we would have the theater ready ready by November.

We had an opening of January 21st.

Well, we kept our January 21st opening, but we did not get a certificate of occupancy until the Tuesday before that.

There were no seats in the Opera House when we first came on that Tuesday.

So we rehearsed during the day and the seats were put in by the crew at night.

As with many construction jobs, things were always behind schedule.

I am standing where the opera house ended when we first bought the building.

These six feet that you're looking at here was added in the first renovation.

Behind me is what's called the fly system.

And this controls everything above the stage.

None of this existed in the original building as it was built in 1926.

But all of these ropes control the backdrops, control the curtain, control everything you see on stage that's not solid machinery.

We're going to walk about 50ft across this stage, and the building ended about here in 1974.

And to my left right here was a staircase.

And that staircase led to dressing rooms above the stage.

And so the first thing that we built is what we call our scene bay.

And that is what you see behind me.

And this bay is long enough to hold not only the sets for the production that we're doing at the moment, but also three other operas at the same time.

All of that is here, and all of this was built in 1980 for the opening night as we were coming in to do our performance of Eugene Onegin, which was the opera we opened with.

As the singers were coming in to their dressing rooms, the carpenters were leaving the dressing rooms, having put in the final touches on the.

On the mirrors and the counters and the chairs.

- With an opening night anywhere, there's a lot of excitement because we've been rehearsing and rehearsing, and we didn't always.

We weren't always able to rehearse in the Opera House.

We had to go to a local church because they had more space.

We didn't have the, the support buildings that we have now that have rehearsal space in them.

And we also rehearsed in the Kress Building, which is just down the street on Main Street.

And we therefore were excited to get the opera onto the stage in front of an audience.

So all of us were it was an extra dose of adrenaline, an extra dose of joy to bring this opera to start the season, the first season in the new house.

So the first opera that was performed here was Eugene Onegin, and Victor asked me to sing the leading Soprano role.

And totally by coincidence, I was the first voice that was heard in the opera company.

[opera music] [applause] [opera music] [applause] [opera music] - Now, for the first time, the company was performing with orchestra.

It had full sets and costumes.

It had an apprentice program which trained young singers, and it began to perform more and more high quality performances in this opera house.

- Just the fact that that we own this theater meant that we could grow in a way that we felt was important.

The way that I felt was important for the theater, it meant that we were not, uh, we weren't jockeying with another organization as to the dates we could use.

Uh, we, we, when we come into this theater and it's still this way, in the beginning of January, the Opera Company is in the theater until the end of March, which means the way we rehearse is something we decide something that is, is created by the artistic needs of what we're doing.

It's not created by a need, the need to get another organization in to rent the theater.

So the fact that we rehearse the way we do, the amount of time that we have on stage, the number of performances that we do, how those performances are laid out, We can do that only because we own this opera house and we have control over this opera house.

- So all of a sudden, you had something really special.

You had an opera company that did a season with four operas that you could see in a matter of a couple of days.

You had performances that were considered very high quality.

You had repertoire that you couldn't see any place else, because Maestro Terenzi always made sure that there was at least one opera in the season that you couldn't see any place else in the country.

- We did an unknown opera Verdi's called, "Aroldo," and we finished the first act, and our audience gave us a standing ovation.

And that didn't happen much in this town in those days.

And I thought at that on that evening, if this completely unknown Verdi opera can get that kind of response, not only could this company do opera like operas like Traviata and Rigoletto and, uh, Verdi's other popular operas.

But we could also do many of the operas that nobody heard of, that we could give life to on our stage as our company was growing with our Verdi cycle and our Masterworks revival series.

We had to expand the season because we had more people who wanted to come to our performances.

So we were we established Sarasota Opera Orchestra in 1990, and they have been with us.

We have had that orchestra since that time.

- Now, opera lovers are obsessive people.

They are people who go around from opera company to opera company, collecting titles in their little bag of operas that they've seen.

So they started to come to Sarasota.

The company started to get national and international attention and then add to it Maestro's passion for Verdi and the decision to do every single work that Verdi wrote, It created a destination for people who loved opera.

[music] - Encouraged by positive public response, Sarasota Opera embarked on an unprecedented journey.

Performed the complete works of the Italian master.

[music] It had never been done.

It is unlikely that it will ever be done again, beginning with Rigoletto in 1989, continuing for 28 years and culminating during the 2016 winter season.

Sarasota Opera House became the American home of Giuseppe Verdi, but before that could be accomplished, the theater would need extensive work in order to accommodate an orchestra and stage large enough for a production of Verdi's Grand Opus, Aida.

[music] [singing opera] [music] [singing opera] [singing opera] - Maestro de Renzi, who is clearly a Verdi fan, said way back in the 80s.

We need to we need to have a visionary strategic direction.

And the strategic direction that I would like to see is that this upper company become the only opera company in the world.

In the world.

I mean, uh, Lascala or the Met or whatever, will be the only opera company in the world that has ever that has produced every single note that Giuseppe Verdi composed.

- Problem we eventually got to was that there were a lot of operas that were too big for us to do in this house, with this orchestra pit.

Our orchestra pit didn't sit seat enough people to do operas like Aida and Don Carlos, and that gave us a reason to do the next renovation.

Next major renovation on the building, which happened in 2007 and 2008.

- And so the initial renovations were really focused on getting it back up to kind of a good standard and being able to kind of quickly move in and operate.

It was the later renovation.

A couple of other things were done too, but it was that renovation really in '07 or '08.

That was really critical.

A couple of things happened.

One is that the theater itself was more or less taken apart to enlarge the the orchestra pit.

- Total cost of the project was somewhere around $20 million.

And obviously the opera didn't have that money in the bank, but we raised the $20 million that was necessary to do this beautiful job in this beautiful building, and to basically put it down to the studs and rebuild it in the design that it initially was built.

I watched it happen.

I watched the production people of the opera, led by Maestro di Renzi, try to work around all of the construction work that was going on and try to put put on an opera season, Be in the middle of a construction project, and it was a challenge, but it was successful.

- It was really at that moment that the Opera Company went back and really looked at those original details of the building and both refurbished what had remained intact, but also recreated some of those lost elements.

So this beautiful facility that we have today is really the result in large part of that '07 and '08.

-You know, it was an honor to be part of the Verdi cycle.

I, I got in early enough that I directed eight different operas of their rotary cycle.

I've now done 12 Verdi operas here, but eight of them were part of the Verdi cycle, many of them the early Verdi's that very few people have been exposed to or know.

And what a thrill it was in exploring those early operas.

There were surprises that we didn't expect.

For example, when we did, "King for a Day," which was Verdi's second opera.

It was a failure when it was composed.

It closed very shortly.

Um, he said he would stop composing after that because of what a disaster it was.

Um, thankfully, they convinced him to start again, but it was fantastic.

And it was chosen by Opera Magazine in England as the best Verdi production in the world that year.

- At the height of our Verdi cycle, people would come from Europe and say, I have seen every Verdi opera, but.

And they said, we came.

We came here to see this.

Or two years ago you did a certain Verdi opera, but I didn't see it.

Can we please do it again?

So it developed this international acclaim, but it also developed a. Our audience for Verdi.

- I had the good fortune of being the chair in 2000, 16 and 2016 was the year in which we completed that vision.

That started in the 80s, and we saved the best for last, because in 2016 we produced Aida.

[singing opera] [applause] [opera music] [applause] [singing opera] [singing opera] [singing opera] [singing opera] [singing opera] [singing opera] [opera music] [singing opera] [music] [music] [singing opera] [opera music] - The restoration of the Opera House provided a stunningly beautiful space for the Sarasota Performing Arts community to showcase their productions.

[music] Now owned and operated by the Sarasota Opera.

A. B. Edwards dream was still alive.

[opera music playing] Just as he had intended 100 years ago, the theater continued to be a destination for all.

- It was part of the vision of Sarasota Opera.

The people who bought this theater in the 1980s to make it not just a home for opera, Because the Sarasota Opera were unique in that we're a festival company.

We performed just a short period of time, but it was also their vision that it would be a place for the community to come together and to have other performing arts groups perform here.

The Sarasota Orchestra performs here.

The Sarasota Ballet actually was born here.

It was born as part of the opera company and then spun off to be this wonderful performing arts organizations.

We have La Musica, the Chamber music festival, and then we're very lucky in the winter to have the Perlman Institute, and they come and do their celebration concert on this stage.

[orchestra music playing] - Well, you know, music is always something that soothes the soul.

And and we are very, very happy that we are able to do this in Sarasota and in this beautiful opera house, which we've done for many, many years.

The acoustics here are terrific.

You know, because sometimes when we rehearse, it's not always in a in the acoustically perfect room.

So sometimes it's very dry and so on.

But when you come on the stage here, it's has that wonderful feel.

And we always, you know, we not only do we play instruments, but we also sing.

So, so our, our chorus master always says, you know, let's listen to that echo.

Let's listen to the reverb and so on.

And this whole gives that to us.

And it's so it's, it's, it's just a great pleasure.

[music] [applause] - The Sarasota Youth Opera was started back in 1984.

So over 40 years ago, maestro had this vision of giving kids a chance to learn about opera, to learn at a young age of what?

What an incredible art form this is.

And there's no question that owning our own theater and our own rehearsal space gave this program a chance to grow in a way that other companies just can't do.

But of course, our crowning glory is we have for decades now been doing a fully staged opera where all of the staff is professional.

So these kids are getting this incredible opportunity to learn from professionals in the field about opera, about being on stage, about collaborating with each other, about making a community of people who are coming together to create something special on stage.

[singing opera] [singing opera] [singing opera] - But it's so touching to me, the number of them that credit their experiences at youth opera and how it helped their confidence to grow and their social skills to grow, and that they've used those skills wherever they've gone, whether it's performing or whether it's something else.

And that's that's so special to be part of something that passes this art form on to, to this art form that I love.

On to the next generation.

[Opera Music] [singing opera] [Opera Music] [singing opera] [Opera Music] [singing opera] [singing opera] [singing opera] [singing opera] - Thanks to generations of inspired stewardship.

This iconic landmark remains strong among all.

[music] Through booms and busts, wars and depression.

hurricanes and floods.

There were times when the lights flickered and the stage was dark.

[music] But the curtain continued to rise.

[music] For 100 years.

This grand concert hall has endured.

[singing opera] [singing opera] [singing opera] [singing opera] - A testament to the community and performing arts in Sarasota.

[music] [applause] [singing opera] [applause] - You know, we went through a period, a couple of years of COVID.

But COVID was a rough time and we couldn't be together and people were afraid to be together, and a lot of people retreated to their screens.

You know, their phones or their iPads or something that they could do in their house.

And that changed the behavior of a lot of people.

But I think we're seeing now five years out of that, people beginning to want to be together again.

The numbers that we see at Sarasota Opera, the number of new people who are coming for the very first time, is very encouraging, because I think there are a lot of people who want that experience of being together, of not just being in their house, but sharing an experience with other people.

- I think as our society changes, opera and opera houses have become more important than they've ever been.

I think as we're entering this time where people spend so, so much of their life on computers, we've come to a time when we've set up our communities, our cities, where people don't come together and talk to each other.

People don't meet on the streets.

We don't have central squares to our life anymore.

Concert halls are the only places where we can all come together, where we can all share a common experience in a way that makes us what we are as people.

- And Sarasota got very lucky that that sense of entertainment for the commoners and for the high society was brought together in one building over that 100 years and hopefully have another 100 years for inspiring people to think beyond ourselves to what is possible.

The civic leaders had the vision that why not aim high?

Not high in terms of high buildings, but high culture.

What would happen if we brought opera to downtown Sarasota?

And it turned out that was a good dream to have.

- We really are known as an epicenter of global design innovation, and I think part of that design innovation in our built environment and our architectural heritage really comes from the creativity that exists because of the the strong visual and performing arts roots here in Sarasota.

I also think this community, the arts flourishes because of the philanthropy.

So we have the creativity from arts and culture.

We have the intellectual capacity, we have the philanthropic moxie.

And in case my world.

It's rare to find a city, particularly of this size, that has such a strong ethos and understanding of the impact of design and architecture.

- There's a John Adams quote about when he's leaving the White House, and he writes to his wife that, "He hopes honorable men will follow him, and that they will take care of this house."

And I thought about that today, that there have been so many people that have taken care of this house, this Opera House from Victor and Stephanie and now Richard Russell.

It's a whole roster, plus the board members and supporters who have really cared about this place.

So, uh, to me, that that makes me very happy.

I like that.

I hope that's a good one.

You can keep that in I hope.

[laughter] [music]