Opera Buff or Not, The Maestro Wants a Word with You

By Sylvia Whitman

If you love opera, Maestro Victor DeRenzi loves you back, and you can skip the next few paragraphs and head straight to the 2019 season highlights. But if you’re like me and have never been to an opera—Gilbert and Sullivan doesn’t count, right?—then DeRenzi has a question for you: Why not?

“You don’t know you won’t like it unless you come,” he says.

DeRenzi wasn’t born with a rosewood baton in his hand. He grew up in Staten Island, NY, in a family with no classical music background. But his 7th grade teacher built sets for a small opera company and bugged DeRenzi and his friends until they agreed to attend a performance. “We figured we’d say we don’t like it, and then he’d leave us alone.”

But DeRenzi did like it. And those friends?

“They’re all in jail,” he jokes.

That “first conversation” led to a lifetime of conducting and producing operas. “What keeps me interested,” he explains, “is this combination of drama of music. It’s not like a Broadway musical; it has impact and emotional depth. Which is why people still pay attention to it, the way people stay interested in Shakespeare.”

As longtime artistic director and principal conductor of Sarasota Opera, Maestro DeRenzi produces the season. He’s kicking off the winter festival with Puccini’s last and grandest opera, Turandot, a crowd-pleaser that has achieved “semi-pop” status with the aria “Nessun Dorma,” covered by vocal greats ranging from Luciano Pavarotti to Aretha Franklin. This production premiered at Sarasota Opera in 2013, but with redesigned sets and new costumes, “we’ve made it a little more spectacular,” says DeRenzi.

“If I were going to try an opera—”

“This one,” DeRenzi says. “Even if you went to all 13 performances, each one would be different. Opera is one of the few artforms that is really live—not even microphoned. You’re in a theater, surrounded by your community, and because the singing’s live, it’s always on the edge.”

But he also doesn’t want me to miss The Magic Flute, written by Mozart shortly before his death at age 36. “You like Shakespeare? That would be Mozart in a different art form,” DeRenzi says. “This is an interesting piece with a lot of symbolism, intellectualism, and very funny characters. Like a Shakespeare play, this opera lives on many emotional, musical, and theatrical levels.”

As for Nabucco, DeRenzi the Verdi specialist is conducting the opera he introduced to Sarasota 24 years ago as part of his complete Verdi canon initiative. Verdi is the “cornerstone of opera today,” he explains. Although Verdi wasn’t Jewish, the compelling captivity story captured the composer’s imagination. “Any good story is worth all of us knowing and all of us telling from our point of view,” says the maestro. 

The first-time-ever pairing of the short(er) comic operas Rita and Susanna’s Secret will draw opera buffs across the country and around the world, DeRenzi predicts. 

Should we blame him for the traffic?

Maybe a little. Sarasota Opera brings many students and principals to town for the season (DeRenzi’s 37th), housing them around town or in the 70-bed complex the Opera runs in the Rosemary District. For vocalists who have recently earned undergraduate or graduate degrees in opera, an apprenticeship with Sarasota Opera, with small roles or a part in the chorus, serves as a bridge between student and professional life. 

“Apprentices also do a lot of outreach throughout the city, singing for groups like the Yale Club, the University Club, and at schools. Hundreds of kids come to see rehearsals every year,” says the maestro. 

DeRenzi characterizes the multiplicity of arts organizations around Sarasota as the opera’s greatest strength—and its greatest challenge. Sarasota Opera is competing for an audience on a tight winter calendar. With $19 back balcony tickets and $25 student passes, the company is luring neophytes and spreading the gospel.

Maestro DeRenzi says he doesn’t want to preach just to the converted.

“So,” he demands, “which show are you coming to?”

For tickets, visit sarasotaopera.org.