The Sarasota Opera 2026 Winter Opera Festival MEGAPOST!  Verdi: Il Trovatore | Floyd: Susannah | Puccini: La Boheme | Lehar: The Merry Widow

Sarasota Opera’s 2026 Winter Opera Festival celebrates many milestones in the company’s history. It marks the 100-year anniversary of its venue, the Sarasota Opera house, and the final season of its Artistic Director and Principal Conductor, Victor DeRenzi, after 44 years with the company. Likely to be remembered for embarking in The Verdi Cycle (a comprehensive survey of all the works of Giuseppe Verdi in critical editions) in 1989, Mr. DeRenzi’s leadership has distinguished Sarasota as a town championing operatic productions reflective of the composer’s original intent. As the company has provided no formal details to follow Mr. DeRenzi’s departure, there’s no telling what’s going to happen to one of the few remaining safe spaces for operatic purists, and so I rushed down to Sarasota to get in while the getting’s good. Coming along for the ride after accepting my double dog dare is Will Chase, a (most often willing) partner in operatic mischief for the last two decades (we may have been responsible for turning the standing room stalls of the Met’s standing room into makeshifts yoga studios in the 2010s). My insistent retelling of Sarasota Opera’s 2025 Winter Opera Festival (with accompanying gestures) somehow managed to lure him out of the plains of Sacramento and brave the hardships of the nationwide TSA March Madness. Through careful scheduling, we were able to catch the entire repertoire offered by the festival as well as the ancillary concerts for covers and apprentices programed alongside the mainstage attractions. Should subsequent seasons carry over the performance values exhibited throughout this week, this experience further cements Sarasota Opera’s status as an obligatory operatic destination for years to come. Unless otherwise states, the performances discussed below were supported by the efforts of Costume Designer Howard Tsvi Kaplan, Lighting Designer Ken Yunker, Hair & Makeup Designer Sue Schaefer and the Sarasota Opera Orchestra, with a chorus comprised of members of the Sarasota Apprentices and Studio Artists under the direction of Chorus Master Artyom Pak.

At baseline, the occasion of tenor Victor Starsky’s role debut as Manrico made Sarasota’s revival of its 2014 production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore an unmissable event. The Viardot-vs-Grisi gang has been hot on the trail of this exciting young artist ever since his Radames (alongside Audrey Babcock’s Amneris) undoubtedly saved a performance of Verdi’s Aida at the Utah Festival Opera three years ago. The promise of his latent possibilities has taken us from Utah to Pittsburgh and now to Sarasota, site of his triumph last season as Verdi’s Stiffelio, where we now revisit to assess his worth under an altogether more heroic assignment. He is joined by familiar names from that fabled 2025 Winter Opera Festival, making these performances of Verdi’s Il Trovatore more or less a Stiffelio reunion. Soprano Aviva Fortunata, baritone Ricardo Jose Rivera and bass Young Bok Kim, return respectively as Leonora, Count di Luna and Ferrando. The cast is enhanced by the addition of mezzo-soprano Lisa Chavez (last season’s Santuzza in Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana) as the tortured gypsy Azucena, and what an addition she makes! Predictably, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor lead the orchestra in this revival.

WC: I’m the Trovatore geek so I get to start.

DV: Alright dude, go off!

WC: How does this production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore stack up when compared to, say, the McVicar production we saw at the Met in the 2010s?

DV: In terms of production value, McVicar’s was the most elevated production of this opera you and I have ever seen. That stage was filled with brooding, borderline grotesque Goyaesque excesses… 

WC: And greased up bodybuilders…why is that all I remember?

DV: Live by the gimmick, die by the gimmick. In comparison, Sarasota’s production by Marco Nisticò is …Flinstonian?  The straight jacketing applied to this staging, particularly the chorus, bordered on cartoonish. But the real gag to me is that I ultimately prefer this simplistic approach provided that it is combined with the exuberant park and bark it invites. Once those two elements combine: French fries – meet chocolate frosty, then nothing else will do. If you can bark, please park.

WC: I agree. If you have great voices to showcase, then the sets should establish time and space and demand no further attention from the audience. Money is tight in 2026, and if given the choice I rather hear million-dollar voices than see million dollar-set. At each curtain, we were confronted with singers at various stages of their prime, taking aggressive artistic risks and hungry to live and die by their art, so ultimately this is why this worked for me.

DV: They were certainly not afraid to sing, which is more than I can say for companies with more prestigious profiles. Oh, and on top of that, we had a real Azucena!

 WC: Lisa Chavez, she was worth this whole trip! Once we got past the speed test that was “Stride la vampa” (what was up with that tempo?) she really let loose. I can’t say the voice is extraordinary in timbre or particularly beautiful, but it is imposing throughout its range, and she is in complete control of its deployment. 

DV: I saw Chavez last year as Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana and she was more than good, but I was entirely unprepared for what we saw tonight. Chest! Chest! Chest! It was in every phrase she sang, even when she ascended to head voice, there was always a tiny bit of chest holding the fabric of her sound intact and it gave her the freedom to do virtually whatever she wanted onstage. 

WC: The big Azucena test for me is “Condotta ell’era in ceppi” and I was holding onto my arm rest white-knuckled as she ran the gamut of the Italian tradition in such explosive fashion. Seemingly at will, she turned her instrument into a razor-sharp line, then refocused it past the orchestra like a sword. She sighed, begged and wept in contrasting cascades of open-throated and glottal gestures, always completely integrated with that devastating use of chest voice throughout.  Her pivot always favored the character’s most vivid emotion. Anxiety, horror, regret, madness, cunning. She was throwing hexes onstage and at no point did she merely project a narcissistic sound. The portrayal is completely realized through her vocalism.

DV: I will add that whatever she was doing on both performances we saw was a level above the rest of her colleagues. In only a very few spots did I sense that she was trying to make a loud sound. Rather, she has a big dragon-lady voice and her technique made every word and every note present. I had an old opera buddy explain this to me when I was way too young to truly get it, but I think I am now beginning to understand. A voice of this dimension, with proper chest development and clarity of declamation, empowers the singer to sound adult in these big parts. You hear other singers trying to make loud sounds by placement, oscillating between the soft and the hard palate, focusing on the mask and who knows what else: what you often get is a lot of fumes. This was meat. Now check out this concept: By setting the stage on fire, I venture to say that Chavez also unlocked another element absent in modern Trovatores: I could sense that she raised the ante for the rest of her colleagues.

WC: You mean, she invited them to vocally one-up each other?

DV: Yes. By my count the performances we saw were the fourth and fifth out of the run of seven, and what was palpable to me is these artists are stepping up to the challenges set by one another at this point in the run. She definitely sparked the fuse between two vocal alpha male figures in the most satisfying of ways, and the audience is winning! 

WC: That certainly describes Ricardo Jose Rivera’s baritone. What a tremendous voice he has, and the wall of sound he can summon: obsidian, black granite. 

DV: Yeah, it’s a luxurious voice that retains its attractive sheen without growing grow opaque under pressure. He was the Stankar in last year’s Stiffelio and I got a similar vibe. His approach can get him in trouble, especially as Di Luna, because his goal is to maintain a uniformity of color and intensity throughout the dynamics. Verdi likes to test the upper extreme of his baritones and that contributed to the sort of tension that made your girl Elena Souliotis so exciting back in the day.

WC: As I mentioned earlier, he is making aggressive artistic risks, and up until the climax of “Il balen” he was singing my jam during the first performance, and then he had a hiccup.

DV: True, but then we forgave him because he nailed it during the second show. This is part of the reason why I think regional companies like Sarasota are so important. This young man has an incredible voice and clearly wants to sing this music the way he was meant to sing it, and so he went for broke, lost some and won some.  

WC: I cannot tell if this was intentional, but I also sensed that Manrico and Di Luna vocally activated one another in a way that Leonora could not. Their vocal vibrancy would simply escalate beyond belligerence as soon as they were interacting with one another. 

DV: I too got wind of that mystical fraternal rivalry when they had their face-to-face confrontation in the gran pezzo concertato in Act II. 

WC: And made that fabled third voice!

DV: Hmmm hmmm, it was the size and weight of an ideal Otello.

WC: Heard in glorious stereo by virtue of us being near that damn wall you’ve been raving about for a whole year!

DV: And so you finally believe in the wall! Oh wall…sweet wall!  We got to break this down for the readers at home. There is an accoustical sweet spot in this auditorium which can be best experienced when you’re sitting in either of the side orchestra aisles around row M. The sound bounces off the wall at an angle, and you may experience a fun stereo effect.

WC: It also helps that our Manrico, Victor Starsky, has been matching Rivera in vocal swagger up until this point. They’re launching torpedoes at the wall! This year finds him making repertoire upgrades and we just saw him sing his first Enzo in Pittsburgh this past December. Here as Manrico, he is doubling down on a decidedly heroic approach, and I am simultaneously thrilled and on the fence about.

DV: We’re essentially watching the growing pains of his transition to heroic tenor. Contrasting with previous hearings, his approach is now overwhelmingly laryngeal, delivering the voice in blunt strokes from the bottom to the middle to the top. When he is on, it is an exhilarating thing to behold. The technique is clearly still unresolved, so the singing lacks palpable freedom and elasticity. Watching him go about it is also fascinating. He appears possessed and terribly introspective as he addresses each bar of the score, particularly in the “big” numbers like “Mal reggendo all’aspro assalto’ where I could visibly see him physically lining up the body to facilitate an open throat.

WC: To the point of reducing his phonation to a string of vowels!

DV: Yes! Everything was aimed to produce the ripest tenore robusto tones and every ounce of smalto he could deliver. I was unashamedly grateful for it. 

WC: I second when you say he appears possessed. I sensed his overwhelming desire to do the damn thing, regardless of the price, which in a few instances he did pay.  The grand scena in Act II  is keeping him up at night because both the cavatina and the call to arms do not live comfortably back to back in vocal arsenal, and he was often having to rob Peter to pay Paul in order to get through it.

DV: That scene severely tested the stamina of his attack. I reckon he could be talked into refashioning “Ah si ben mio” through a more romantic approach, and maybe that would leave him enough voice to thunder through “Di quella pira” the way he (and everyone in the audience) wants him to, but I have a feeling he would find the mere suggestion insulting.

WC: I don’t know, during the first performance I heard him make informed choices in phrasing which helped him get through the aria more comfortably. He did sound more at ease in the second performance, and “Di quella pira” was solid.  Also, don’t forget that he was at his most relaxed in Act IV when he banked in the undeniable sensual appeal of his mezza voce. Watching him conquer his instrument will remain something for us to look forward to. 

DV: So are you ready for Floyd’s Susannah tomorrow?

 WC: What about Leonora?

DV: I’m trying to end this on a good note.

WC: Rude!

DV: Listen, by its nature, Il Trovatore is conventions on steroids, and so far we have onstage three alpha singers. In order to balance the account, the Leonora must not only reign supreme over her music, she also must possess that voce di prima donna to remain viable in the ensembles. The music eggs this on and the ear craves it. This was unfortunately not the case with Ms. Fortunata. Why are you shaking your head?

WC: Because I know you’re going to write it just like that. While I don’t fully disagree with you, I will give her props because, at the end of the day, anyone who can satisfy the challenges in the score as well as she did will get my endorsement. But I do yield that a Leonora with a serviceable voice who sings well is likely to be confronted with a case of diminishing returns. As soon as those guys walked onstage, Leonora became the awkward vocal third wheel despite her best efforts.

DV: I will also check myself in that I thoroughly enjoyed her singing as Lina in Stiffelio last year, but the challenge with Il Trovatore is that we have an interminable history of greatness to source from, and the comparisons at the top do not flatter Ms. Fortunata. I think she can comfortably add her contributions with those of her American counterparts in the past quarter century. She is a valid Leonora of the modern era, with the trappings associated with this qualification.

WC: That’s a nasty thing to say.

DV: On the contrary! There are plenty of elements to recommend her participation. She possesses a penetrating warble which only lightly clouded her diction. She can skate through ornate music with passing grades (the trill is mostly indicated). At its best, her timbre is clear and limpid. The weight of the instrument is the lighter side of lirico spinto, responsive to the many dynamic effects required – loud, soft, can ride the orchestra and the ensemble at will without loss of consistency. This is nothing to sneeze at!

WC: But…

DV: But the chest is bypassed with clever placement, and the registers above are coordinated just enough to satisfy the role at face value. Her vocal palette is limited, minimizing the impact of the Leonora of the more impassioned pages. I also notice a certain disembodied quality at the top which betrayed a different concern: During the brief arioso with Manrico before their wedding “L’onda de ‘suoni mistici” (which on paper she should have nailed) I found her line at the top curiously flat. 

WC: I did have a sneaking suspicion that we were dealing with a full lyric mezzo-soprano with an extension because the color in the middle seemed most malleable. I thought, maybe, Adalgisa….

DV: She’s sung Norma.

WC: As formal deflection, I will recall my earlier aside regarding tempi. In both performances I felt that several sections (Tacea la notte placida, and Stride la vampa) where deployed inappropriately fast, to the detriment of the effect the artist may have hoped to achieve. There was even a moment where I swear I saw Starsky signaling for a more spacious beat with his hand.

DV: During “Mal reggendo”? Yeah, I saw that. He was trying to put the breaks on Victor DeRenzi so he could get the phrase comfortably out. I am certain that DeRenzi has Verdi’s metronome markings on his side, but at the end of the day the beat has to work for the artists singing for him (and us!). That said, I have nothing but admiration for someone who will spend the last 37 years programming the entire Verdi catalogue and stick to performance standards which are crumbling the world over. Right now, we’re in the world DeRenzi has helped create for the past 40 years, and we’re reaping the benefits of a Trovatore we’d be lucky to get anywhere else, with all repeats, variations, bells and whistles… I will toast to him. 

WC: Speaking of those repeats and variations…some are landing and some are weird?

DV: I thought I was supposed to be the mean one.

WC: And you deserve a break. There’s principle and there’s reality, and at some point the two should meet somewhere in the middle. Our two male leads found themselves in really tough vocal spots during their grand scenas on both performances, and as soon as they approached terra ferma I felt their agony at the prospect of tackling the dreaded repeat.  

DV: True, there were several instances where those were just brutal, and add the insult of having them squeeze perfunctory scales here and there to “grace the melody” which I often found to be ill-suited to the music (“Tu vedrai” was a little ghastly), but mostly because they were not showing off the singers’ strengths. I kept thinking “just skip those and brace for impact”

WC: Case in point, I thought it was apropos that Ricardo Jose Rivera tossed that high note during “Per me ora fatale” after he nailed “Il balen del suo sorriso”. That came from his soul, and I felt it. And that’s it, this is how we can end it on a positive.

DV: But…Young Bok Kim as Ferrando…

WC: (bangs table) On a positive!

Next on the scheduled line-up of mainstage performances was a production of Carlisle Floyd’s classic American folk opera Susannah, but before diving into the depths of Appalachia, we filled the pre-primetime hours by dabbling in the adjacent programing offered by Sarasota opera, affording us a closer glimpse at the worth of the company’s stock of apprentices and cover artists. Short breaks between the functions made for a jam packed and eventful Thursday, serving unique perspective to the harrowing demands that opera as profession makes on these talented artists.  

DV: And by the magic of opera, we go from fifteenth century Zaragoza to New Hope Valley, Tennessee. In terms of programming, we’re in stark, polar-opposite aesthetics. Like Il Trovatore, Susannah can make for a very powerful night at the opera, if for entirely different reasons.  

WC: (Sigh) That is an understatement.

DV: I thought this was as fine a performance of the opera as any we’re likely to see. The true to life sets by R. Keith Brumley date back to the 2010 Des Moines Metro Opera production, and they are supportive of Director’s Martha Collins straight-forward take on this disturbing and sadly relevant story. Ms. Collins is fortunate to work with such talented cast of natural singing actors, of which soprano Hanna Brammer takes pride of place. 

WC: She truly sang this part to the manner born, and I was frankly flabbergasted by her versatility.

DV: It really was a tour de force. Susannah is deceptive, because once you get past the happy scenes in the first act, the vocal panorama changes very quickly.  Hanna Brammer accepted the challenge and made Susannah a tremendous vehicle for her instrument. At baseline, she is a lyric soprano with a girlish, appealing timbre. And yet, her attack has a tomboyish edge which she intelligently rations to depict her transition from a hopeful, well-adjusted young woman to the embattled, harrowing outsider we are left with at end of the opera. 

WC: That’s also the impression I got from her. Her voice responds when Susannah is supposed to fight. Its vivid and you rally around her, making the progressive decay of her situation even more devastating. The edge that you mentioned will surely come to her aid as she explores heavier assignments in the lyric repertoire. 

DV: What did you think about the tenor?

WC: He was very engaging. A little forward and erratic vocally, but matching the character.

DV: You’re talking about Little Bat, Dylan Schang. There’s a vibrant gleam in that sound, which can veer pitchy in the upper partials if he doesn’t watch it. His use of it matched the character’s awkward position, an immature, anxious simpleton, without crossing into cancellable territory. He contrasted appropriately with the Sam of tenor Jeremy Brauner, whom I was referencing earlier. That was a lyric voice with a fuller sound, capable of portraying greater introspection and agency. I found to be a promising singer.

WC: I was less clear on Jason Zacher, our Olin Blitch. I would be lying if part of me was not hoping that the cover, Hans Tashjian, had made use of the Showgirls marbles.

DV: Jason Zacher I have seen in comprimario parts for years in Atlanta, so I was thrilled to see him get a stab at a principal role. I agree that Mr. Tashjian made a compelling case for himself during the covers concert. He also has, how shall one put it, adjacent qualities recommending him. Ultimately, I think both share similar limitations: they have yet to develop a consistent blunt bass sound throughout the range. We must also keep in mind that we heard both singers under very different circumstances.

WC: Fair – My gut reaction found Tashjian’s bass more profondo and bigger in scope, but we heard him in a small room pitted against piano accompaniment. There’s no telling how that sound will expand in a big hall. 

DV: Maybe we will find out soon enough. And since you mention the covers, don’t forget Lindsey Polcyn was onstage tonight. She was Mrs. McLean.

WC: You mean baby Zajick? We should have sat in the back for that Covers concert this afternoon because she blasted the lines of my face with that voice – no botox needed.  Credit to the casting department at Sarasota Opera for securing two extraordinary dramatic mezzos for the roster.  

DV: All that notwithstanding, I thought Zacher was a good Blitch, on the younger side perhaps, which brought an altogether different element to his carnal struggles. Does this make him anymore endearing? 

WC: I don’t think so. His profession ultimately tanks his character, young or old, in the eyes of the audience. The act of leveraging his position negates any redeemable quality left to consider. It is a tragedy of his own making. 

DV: A share of tonight’s success belongs to Conductor Jessé Martins. I’ve heard many performances where the orchestra can lean bombastic if left unchecked, and he maintained a reasonable balance between the singers and the pit. So now that we’ve gotten these good people out of the way, tell me something. I lured you to Sarasota with the promise of Il Trovatore, and this was the show I felt would pose some…err…complications for you. Did you enjoy Susannah?

WC: I appreciate you calling me out like this. My stance is that the opera is effective and evokes deep emotions: I was invested, horrified, and remain haunted by what I saw. But I cannot say that I truly enjoyed myself. If I were to reach for the first thing that gets in the way for me, I hate the dialect used in the libretto. I am from the region in question, and the text just irks me. I know this is a very personal thing but I just couldn’t get past it. 

DV: In that regard, I am the other side of the same coin. I too had issues embracing the opera tonight, but because the subject matter is simply too present, too real and too true to life to permit the suspension of disbelief and allow me to consume the opera as artifice. If anything, the dialect provided a slight bit of distance which assisted me to get through it. Susannah mirrors our current social turmoil to the point where the veneer of artifice is never truly allowed to set. I recall Larry Kramer describing walking out of the premiere of The Normal Heart in 1985 simply to walk into the thick of the hell he’s dramatized: There’s no respite, but it wasn’t always like this for me. I remember spending a great deal of time preparing for Susannah’s Metropolitan Opera premiere in 1999 when I was a wee child, and I made sure to snort all the recordings available. At the time I was taking a folklore course at Georgia State University taught by professor John Burrison, and he let out a big sigh when he saw a copy of the Cheryl Studer studio recording on my desk. “You’re brave bringing this thing to my class” he joked. I made sure to bring a copy of the Phyllis Curtin live recording the following day. He chuckled a little and handed me a note after class: “Look for the Maralin Niska tapes” it said. 

WC: That would have never happened during No Child Left Behind.

DV: We peaked back then! Ever since I have enjoyed the handful of productions of the opera for the very specific depiction of American misery it provides. 

WC: For me, there’s some elements of the score that resonated with me. The score is evocative of the beauty of the landscape, and savagely juxtaposed with the reprehensible side of this revival community. His treatment of the heroine is sadistic ala Puccini, and these are things that my opera brain can accept. Musically, I was most taken by the second scene in Act II. Olin Blitch facilitating the congregation’s bearing down on Susannah with the promise of bypassing their accusation as long as she indoctrinates into the old is great opera in the style of Gounod and Verdi. Yet, that peak seldom matched, and other pivotal dramatic scenes were often resolved primarily through the orchestra. 

DV: Like the abuse scene? 

WC: Yeah, moments where the vocal line strikes me as an interpolation can take me out of the opera. 

DV: I agree with you to a point. Little Bat’s description of Olin Blitch’s comeuppance is one of those scenes, but the way that it was delivered tonight made me realize the scene is subliminal gold: The preacher’s corpse floating  on the creek where Susannah’s idyllic world was corrupted and appropriated by Blitch to baptize the community with his con, now anointed by his own blood which cleanses the real sin committed: It was deliciously satisfying. I think my heart will warm up to the opera again once we can put some distance between reality and the issues at play. As of now, I found myself wanting to cry out against those people onstage, and when we left the theater I saw judgement in the faces of the various passer-byers we encountered outside.

WC: You don’t think you’d have a good time hanging out with the good people of New Haven?

DV: I mean, maybe during the first scene when everyone’s having a good ol funky time in that square dance. I’m a recovering Catholic and a proud atheist, so as soon as these people start to mention their life manual: Yeah, miss me with that. I would be out of there before the picnic scene. I’m eating my peas at home.  

Feeling the effects of Sarasota’s intense operatic bootcamp, which by now was starting to hit like a Double Dare physical challenge, we crossed the gates of the William E. Schmidt Opera Theatre once more, this time for Giacomo Puccini’s eternal La Boheme.

DV: I’d like to think that I’m a limber Gen-Xer, but I am beginning to feel this adventure in my bones. I wonder what this must be like for the singers. 

WC: Believe when say that the millennial contingency is feeling it too, and to think we’re here on vacation. The apprentices make up the bulk of the chorus, and I’ve seen several covers filling various comprimario parts. These artists are singing shows back-to-back! Add to the mix the members of the orchestra, they’ve collectively been bearing the brunt of this marathon since February 14^th. 

DV: I praise these young people for keeping us motivated. Tonight some of them rekindled flames in my heart I thought had died years ago. 

WC: Yes, tonight was super cool. And through the more familiar operatic waters that is Puccini’s La Boheme of all things.  

DV: And a graciously standard version of it at that. This revival of Sarasota Opera’s 2006 production of La Boheme remains in line with the company’s motto in keeping with the creator’s original intent. 

WC: No giant chimichangas onstage!

DV: Or Tik Tok bait re-imaginings. David P. Gordon’s set designs are meticulously traditional, and while he does attempt to reinvent the wheel, they compare favorably against glitzier renditions. His clever use of space and perspective yields contrasting tableaux in the second and third act, while the scenes at the garret are appropriately intimate and modest.  

WC: The direction too played along a similar vein. Director Stephanie Sundine has an eye for detail: I’ve never registered the aggravation of peddlers while they wait for the sleeping guards to open the toll gates at the Barriere d’Enfer. Sustaining dramatic excellence across her principals proved a more challenging task, with some key players, notably our Rodolfo, falling short of the ideal. 

DV: She at least enjoyed plenty of synergy with Victor De Renzi, who maintained order between the pit and the stage. I thought his tempi tonight, contrasting with his leadership for Il Trovatore, betrayed a greater romantic freedom, at least when the moment sparked his fancy. He certainly gave Ashley Milanese plenty of space to indulge her phrasing, and we were the luckier for it.

WC: About her. I fear that once we get on the subject of Ashley Milanese’s Mimi, we won’t be able to focus on anything else. 

DV: I saw her last year as Nedda in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and was immediately sold. That initial impression is once again confirmed here. This is a true Italian lyric soprano in sound and practice. The way she knits each note to achieve her legato is so congruent with Italian style we associate with singers like Mafalda Favero, Magda Olivero, Licia Albanese and Toti Dal Monte. Her voice grew a vine along the melodic phrase. And flowered in all the special spots. Her chest voice is well established and collaborates with all registers, allowing her to sing as if she were speaking. 

WC: Just like Lisa Chavez two nights ago.

DV: That is another old school type singer, the kind we are constantly searching for and now we’ve heard two of them in a week, so tell me I didn’t drag you to the right city! Her technique allows her voice to propel the word out like clear, delicate pearls and project them into the auditorium as palpable emotions, which, when combined with the alchemy of Puccini, confronts the audience in devastating ways. Also, this voice is ever present and only in a couple of bars did I sense her effort to be loud. Small utterances, which normally fall below the orchestral cacophony with most Mimis, were realized with startling ease, and sung with such charm and simplicity so as to promote Mimi’s good-natured and demure personality.

WC: She is very clever in how she uses the breaks in her voice in her favor. Instead of detracting from her characterization, they further drew the audience in. 

DV: She’s in search of a different plane of expression through vocalism.  Did you notice how she drained her sound of color for the last act? This is LP era artistry. 

WC: Let me call attention to the fact that, per the printed materials I hold in my hand, she’s also sung Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor here. If she applied this sort of style into that music, then I am honestly obsessed. This sort of approach has been discouraged in bel canto for over half a century. 

DV: I’ve been told she’s singing Rossini’s Mose in Egitto in Alburquerque.

WC: Stop ruining my marriage and finances!

DV: I found tenor WooYoung Yoon’s singing, though vigorously projected throughout the show, emphatically less engaging. He appeared focused primarily on accomplishing the part rather than interpreting it.

WC: I found his vocalism indistinct and overtly harsh, especially at the top of his range. Oddly, his phrasing skewed around the melodic line but rarely managed to resonate with it. It was frustrating to behold because the voice is doing what every voice needs to do: He ascends easily to the top, sings all the notes, and cuts through the orchestra with little difficulty. But the tone and musicality backing his singing reminded me of the bad parts of Rockwell Blake: It’s like he’s singing through his teeth. 

DV: The rest of the cast did much to rectify the disbalance at the top of the ticket, chief among them the resplendent Musetta of soprano Virginia Mims, who did right by the legendary operatic lineages her name represents.

WC: I saw you gasp as soon as you read her name in the program (IYKYK). That’s another voice with old school values and the healthy core that comes with it.  So even though her instrument has slender proportions, she could confidently project “ed assaporo allor la bramosia sottil” with the same sheen as the rest of her waltz.  

DV: I always feel bad about Schaunard because his one shot to make his presence known is that brief tale about the parrot music lesson, after which he becomes the “Michelle” in the girl group. Riley Findley’s resonant baritone and fine acting presence kept that from being the case tonight. Also representing the baritone delegation was  Filippo Fontana as Marcello, and I thought he was well on his way to earn his own mini-paragraph, but he got a bit derailed during the duet with Rodolfo in Act IV. 

WC: I blame the tenor for that. I was under his spell up until that moment.

DV: Real talk, do you wish the cover, Dylan Schang, had gone on tonight instead of Mr. Yoon? You, know…Little Bat McLean?

WC: (sigh) Little Bat will live forever in our hearts. I would say no because, as of now, his timbre is a bit too cool and his production too forward for this type of music, and that sound would have contrasted poorly with our Mimi in different ways. But he seemed very committed during the Covers at 3 concert, and has plenty of talent to egg on his development. I’m on the lookout for Lil Bat.

DV: Those who have made it this far may recall that we left out our thoughts on Young Bok Kim’s Ferrando from the Il Trovatore review two essays ago. We figured that we would wait for his Colline and produce a comprehensive appraisal. 

WC: And I am glad that we waited. This is an artist who has graced the stage of the William E. Schmidt Opera Theatre for over two decades. He clearly gives his voice to this audience with palpable love. Though originally I could not ignore the unsteadiness of his declamation, I was able to appreciate the benefits of his participation tonight under the slower tempo in the “vecchia zimarra.”

DV: After seeing him here as Jorg in Verdi’s Stiffelio and Basilio in Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia last season, I had mentally prepared to look past the overall shakiness we heard during Il Trovatore. But tonight revealed a voice more akin what I imagine his prime to have been when allowed space to roll out. 

WC: I may step on some toes when I say this, but performances such as tonight’s serve to remind us that an opera like La Boheme can fall victim to its own success. 

WC: It’s “add singer and stir” reputation, you mean?

DV: Precisely. The basics of Puccini’s secret sauce is so strong, it will activate as long as the opera is entrusted to good, conscientious professionals. This has in turn promoted the proliferation of mediocre performances to the point that we’ve lost the plot.  As standards fall, so do artistic compasses, and nowadays finding idiomatic exponents of a Mimi and a Rodolfo, something that used to be commonplace once, can be a struggle. Tonight we heard an otherwise fine performance of La Boheme which was elevated beyond its station by the participation of a true exponent of one of these parts. It has been eye opening.

If Sarasota welcomed the Viardot-vs-Grisi gang with an Il Trovatore bear hug, it sent us away with the effervescent toasts of Lehar’s The Merry Widow, performed in Sheldon Harnick’s classic English language translation. Out of the four productions we enjoyed throughout the week, The Merry Widow’s was without question the most beautiful.  

WC: Remind me to thank you for suggesting this line up of shows, because tonight was the most ideal way to end this pilgrimage. After all these tragic tales and harrowing dramas, Lehar’s fizzy score will send me to the airport security line with a smile tomorrow. 

DV: To be fair, this was the flight that was on sale at Delta, but I agree that my scheduling was pure genius. I find it curious that this operetta, and Floyd’s Susannah, are the two featured works sung in English, yet Merry Widow served as the antidote to Susannah for me tonight. The emotional stakes are polar opposites in the Merry Widow, and from beginning to end, champions a very accessible brand of entertainment, whereas every morning when I scroll through social media, it’s one Susannah situation after the next. I’m willing to say the dialect did not bother you this time around.

WC: For sure. The translation made the humor very digestible, further promoting a “kick back and enjoy me” escapism which this score already has in spades. I will point out that as soon as the singing started, I became quite reliant on the supertitles. We often criticize singers for their diction in foreign languages, but it is a sobering realization that the same applies when they’re singing in their native tongue.

 DV: I blame Lil Bat. What did you think of the production? It’s brand new.

WC: This was the production that had the most wow factor for me. Steven C. Kemp designs, particularly those depicting Hanna’s Pontevedrian garden party, made heavy references to the City Beautiful Movement and Art Nouveau. I thought the retrofitting of the garden into Maxim’s was a clever way to steward resources. It is 2026 and these tariffs are no joke.

DV: We’ve barely mentioned him up until now, but the costumes for every show in the 2026 Opera Winter Festival were designed by Howard Tsvi Kaplan, and he outdoes himself in this production by showing a lot of versatility: Uniforms, formal wear, native garb, he even dressed the Grisettes. There were artists of every shape and size on that stage tonight and they all looked like a million box. The red dress he made for Hannah in the third act was spec-ta-cu-lar! 

WC: For better or worse, the singing benchmarks at play are more forgiving than in Il Trovatore or La Boheme. The format of operetta is more forgiving: artists can make up a lot of ground through singing-adjacent factors, either through stage business, or through the strength of their dialogue. 

DV: I think a mixture of these elements came to the aid of our Hanna Glawari tonight. At her very entrance, soprano Raquel González dazzled the audience with the radiance of her million-dollar smile. She has a spellbinding stage presence, and won the audience through her charming disposition and engaging personality revealed through the dialogue. 

WC: I agree that her speaking voice was clear, but when she sang…

DV: When she sang, the situation got a bit complicated. She made her most compelling singing at the top of the range, which featured an alluring dome and an expansive bloom. The middle is less accessible and the lower register was virtually inaudible. I know she’s sung a handful of Puccini heroines and lirico spinto parts in the past (Verdi’s Elisabetta in Don Carlo sticks out) and I’d be curious to hear how this instrument handles those parts. Those ladies need to be heard in the middle and below. And this orchestra is gossamer! 

WC: Fortunately for Ms. González, Hannah is set up for success in the libretto. The same cannot be said for her romantic interest. 

DV: True, besides Hanna, The Merry Widow depends on a great Danilo, who presents an altogether more complicated challenge interpretively. He’s emotionally unavailable, obstinate and headstrong, unwilling to resolve the pair’s mutual attraction despite his better judgement. Great Danilos must balance these qualities to win the audience and Hanna by curtain fall. Tonight we saw and heard baritone Jake Stamatis do his best to endear himself to the audience, and he came close to overdoing it. 

WC: I agree that he was more than a tad hammy and relied too often on the strength of his dashing smile to bail his character out. While I personally did not mind it at first, things got progressively superficial by the middle of Act II. At least his instrument was viable and inoffensive. I actually found the supporting romance entirely more engaging. 

DV: I have a minuscule reference for Sara Kennedy through her perfunctory Lola in last season’s Cavalleria Rusticana, and I am glad to reassess her in a part that better showcases her potential. The lightness and resolve of Valencienne was a becoming fit for her colorful light mezzo-soprano. Tenor Patrick Bessenbacher is new to me, and he was a stylish Camille. 

WC: I got goosebumps when “Meinen Lippen” from Lehar’s Giuditta was added at the top of Act III. I am no operetta connoisseur, but Meine Lippen is my track!

DV: That act is very short, so it made sense for Anthony Barrese to insert a suitcase aria to beef up the run time. Incidentally, he made a lot of great choices tonight. I’m a singer first sort of guy, but in the absence of a dominant vocal element leading the pack, my ear gravitated to the orchestra, which rose to the occasion time and time again under his leadership. This was no accident, since in addition to holding the position of Artistic Director and Principal Conductor at Opera Southwest, and serving as the Music Director at Opera Delaware, Mr. Barrese moonlights as the Music Director of Chicago Folks Operetta. So I was not surprised that he seemed quite at home navigating the unique blend of Viennese sentimentality and eastern European elements which make up this score. Whenever the occasional misalignment between the stage and the pit would present itself, his baton rerouted the principals back towards sweeping romanticism and elegance. And I found myself nodding along.

WC: Did I hear you favor the conductor at the expense of the singers?

DV: Horrible, isn’t it? What has Sarasota done to me?

Sarasota Opera unveiled its 2026/27 Season while Will and I were tootsie rolling between these shows. Among the highlights, Sarasota Opera will present Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel, Verdi’s La Traviata, Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos, and Janacek’s masterpiece Jenufa. Rumor has it that the legendary Karita Mattila is getting involved. For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.sarasotaopera.org

-Daniel Vasquez