The Sarasota Opera House is kicking off their 2021 Winter Season with “The Happy Deception” a one act farce that will feature passion, menace, and comedy.
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
Arriving cast members had to quarantine themselves for a few days before virtual rehearsals gave way to socially distanced meetings among cast members. There are restrictions on their activities to limit potential exposure to the coronavirus, but several artists say they are excited to bring music back to the opera house and into their own lives.
“I am so excited. I am so happy to get back to this art form I love, so excited to collaborate, even just to talk with people about the sets and costumes,” said Martha Collins, who is directing the season-opening production of “The Happy Deception” by Gioachino Rossini.
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.