It would be the greatest compliment to DeRenzi to note that the performance continued without a hitch. Under the direction of assistant conductor Geoffrey Loff, making his Sarasota debut this season, the orchestra sounded as polished as usual with notable solos from both English and French horns.
The singers, most of whom are veterans of Sarasota Opera seasons past, carry out their roles with consummate skill pointing to the fact that the largest share of work for both conductor and stage director is done prior to the first performance.
Stephanie Sundine has always shown great skill directing large farces and plenty of action on stage. The small cast of “Bruschino” has its own challenges twisting and turning around the deception plotted by lovers Florville (Christopher Bozeka) and Sofia (Hanna Brammer).
It was the sound of the applause from a crowd of roughly 200 people scattered around the auditorium. No matter how enthusiastic they might have been, 200 people can’t sound like the much larger crowds that usually keep the Opera House filled each season.
But to DeRenzi and other company members, that socially distanced audience produced a most joyful sound.
Though he tends to look at his job “through the eyes of conducting, for me it was just great that we were all together making music. There were people in the theater for the first time in a year and we were able to bring the community together, the performers, our crews and the audience.”
Sarasota Opera returns with a ‘Happy Deception’
A new Sarasota Opera season gets underway this weekend with the opening of Rossini’s one-act comic opera “The Happy Deception.” Soprano Hanna Brammer stars as the Duchess Isabella, who disappears and washes ashore in a small mining town, where she is taken in and cared for by a kindly miner, played by bass/baritone Alexander Charles Boyd (Brammer’s real-life husband). Tenor Christopher Bozeka plays her grieving husband, Duke Bertrando. The company also includes bass Joshua DeVane and baritone Joseph Beutel. Artistic Director Victor DeRenzi leads a smaller-than-usual orchestra and Martha Collins is the stage director. The production kicks off a four-show season that runs through April with shorter and more intimate productions to allow for social distancing and enhanced safety protocols. “The Happy Deception” will be presented live in the Sarasota Opera House for six performances through Feb. 25, and will later be made a
A variety of familiar singers, along with some Sarasota newcomers, will star in rarely seen, intimate productions for Sarasota Opera’s revised winter/spring season.
The company announced in November that because of the coronavirus, it canceled plans for its traditional major productions (including “Tosca” and “The Pearl Fishers”) and will instead present four smaller-scale, one-act works, two of which have never been produced by the company before.
There will be 24 performances in all beginning Feb. 12 with Gioachino Rossini’s comic “The Happy Deception.” It will be followed, beginning Feb. 19, by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s “La serva padrona (Maid to Mistress),” which was produced by the Sarasota Opera in 1967, long before the company moved to its home at the Sarasota Opera House in 1984.