When I first moved to Chicago, people often told me that I would need to take at least one warm weather vacation to maintain some sanity during brutal Windy City winters. I've often heeded that advice, so when a friend recently invited me to visit for a cultural weekend getaway in Sarasota, Fla., I jumped at the chance.
I soon learned that I was following the advice of a historical Chicagoan who also encouraged snowbird tourism to Sarasota. Socialite and astute businesswoman Bertha Honoré Palmer (wife of Chicago real-estate magnate Potter Palmer) owned thousands of acres of Sarasota land in the early 20th century, so it's no surprise that her wealthy friends followed her to help make the Florida town a fashionable winter getaway.
But the duo who really helped put Sarasota on the cultural map was Mable and John Ringling, who made their big-time fortune from their consolidated big-top circus business (which eventually became what is still known as the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus). The Ringlings established their circus winter quarters in Sarasota in the early 1900s and bought up lots of local property while building up mansions for themselves and amassing an amazing art collection.
The spoils of those circus entertainment dollars are on display at the cultural complex known as The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. It's a slightly jarring journey to walk from the "high art" works of European masters like Rubens, Velazquez and Gainsborough in the complex's Museum of Art to the "lively art" world of American sideshows, trapeze artists and clowns in the colorful Circus Museums (don't miss the massive miniature model showing what a major logistical operation it was to move the circus from town to town).
You can also see how the Ringlings lived like kings in their elaborately decorated "Ca' d'Zan" shore-side mansion, or visit the museum's Italianate courtyard to see the Ringling's bronze replica of Michelangelo's statue of David (whose silhouette graces the Sarasota city logo).
Performing arts aplenty
Just adjacent to the Ringling Museums is the Florida State University Performing Arts Center, which is home to the Sarasota Ballet and the professional Asolo Repertory Theatre (which hosted composer Stephen Schwartz's new updated take on the musical revue Working back in 2008 before its current incarnation at Chicago's Broadway Playhouse). Visit www.ringling.org for more information.
And though Florida dinner theaters have often had dubious artistic reputations, the Sarasota-based Golden Apple Dinner Theatre shows itself to be very hip and progressive. Currently playing through April 10 is the 2003 Broadway puppet hit musical Avenue Q, while the Golden Apple recently co-sponsored a weekly drag bingo night. Visit www.thegoldenapple.com for more information.
Grand opera gestures
In another culturally incongruous Florida pairing, the Golden Apple is literally situated next door downtown to the Sarasota Opera House. Now in its 52nd season, the Sarasota Opera performs five operas a year (four in winter repertory) in an acoustically bright and recently renovated 1,122-seat historic theater built in 1926.
Being a self-diagnosed opera queen, I couldn't miss two repertory rarities this season at Sarasota Opera: Verdi's 1843 work I Lombardi (now in rep through March 20), and composer Robert Ward and librettist Bernard Stambler's 1961 Pulitzer Prize-winning opera adaptation of Arthur Miller's 1953 drama The Crucible (in rep through March 19). Also in rotation are La Boheme and Don Giovanni.
Under the artistic directorship of conductor Victor DeRenzi, Sarasota Opera is nearing completion of its Verdi Cycle, an ambitious undertaking to make it the only American opera company to have produced every single opera by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi.
DeRenzi conducted a musically impressive performance of I Lombardi, cast with vocal standouts like Metropolitan Opera veteran bass Kevin Short as the redemptive villain Pagano and tenor Rafael Dávila as the Muslim lover Oronte. The booming ensemble voices showed off Verdi's score with plenty of thrilling bombast.
Too bad Temistocle Solera's I Lombardi libretto is such a lurching storytelling mess involving self-righteous Lombard crusaders, interfaith lovers and inadvertent patricide. Aside from one aria deploring the violent crusaders contradictory acts of murder and plunder (delivered by the Giselda of slightly top-note-unsteady soprano Abla Lynn Hamza), I Lombardi offers up a decidedly simplistic "Christians Good/Muslims Bad" world view.
Director Martha Collins ultra-traditional approach was largely face-front staging with little interaction between singers. Collins also oddly featured scenery changes in full (albeit dimmed) view of the audience (who chuckled when ever singers easily hoisted or pushed aside seemingly heavy hills and cave walls).
If the overtly Christian I Lombardi would please Fox News conservatives, then MSNBC liberals would lap up the allegorical and historical depiction of the Salem Witch Trials (a not-so-veiled criticism of the 1950s McCarthyism) in The Crucible.
Director Michael Unger staged a dramatically satisfying Crucible that is both emotionally and musically thrilling. Why more opera companies don't regularly produce Ward's tonal and cinematically lush score is a mystery, since it packs such a tense and a dramatic punch.
Conductor David Neely led a large and vocally strong ensemble with many impressive performances. Baritone Sean Anderson made for a tall and imposing John Proctor, squaring off nicely with both mezzo-soprano Heather Johnson as his wife, Elizabeth, and soprano Lindsay Barche as Proctor's former mistress, Abigail Williams.
Other vocally solid work came from contralto Nicole Mitchell as the slave Tituba, bass Jeffrey Tucker as Rev. John Hale and tenor Mathew Edwardsen as Judge Danforth.
The Crucible marks Sarasota Opera's new American Classics series, which aims to feature an American opera each season (next year gay composer Samuel Barber's Vanessa is scheduled). Sarasota Opera auspiciously launched the series by hosting 93-year-old Crucible composer Robert Ward, who joined the cast and production crew at the curtain call for a well-deserved standing ovation. Visit www.sarasotaopera.org for more information.
Please send theater news and other related tidbits to scottishplayscott@yahoo.com and andrew@windycitymediagroup.com .
