Sarasota, FL—Sarasota Opera is pleased to announce a $50,000 Arts Appreciation Grant from Gulf Coast Community Foundation. In a longstanding commitment to honor the cultural and economic contributions of the region’s cornerstone arts groups, Gulf Coast provides flexible funding to organizations so they can focus on their artistic missions. Sarasota Opera General Director Richard Russell states, “The Arts Appreciation grant from Gulf Coast Community Foundation will provide needed support to Sarasota Opera as we recover from the devasting year of the COVID shutdowns. It will help us as we once again host an in-person Youth Opera Program and return to full-scale opera productions.”
Acknowledging the region’s reputation as a leading artistic and cultural haven, Gulf Coast awarded Arts Appreciation Grants to 12 arts organizations in the area, including Sarasota Opera. Sarasota Opera’s 63rd consecutive season will begin this week with Rossini’s The Silken Ladder. The 2022 Winter Festival will open with Puccini’s Tosca, followed by Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment, Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, and Verdi’s Attila. The Gulf Coast grant also supports the Sarasota Youth Opera, which will be presenting a special concert with the Sarasota Opera Apprentice Artists and the Sarasota Opera Orchestra in March 2022. With generous backing from the entire community, Sarasota Opera was the only opera company in the U.S. to present a season in their theater during February and April 2021.
ABOUT GULF COAST COMMUNITY FOUNDATION
For more than 25 years, together with its donors, Gulf Coast Community Foundation has transformed our region through bold and proactive philanthropy. Gulf Coast is a public charity that was created in 1995 through the sale of the Venice Hospital. Since then, it has become the philanthropic home of nearly 1,000 families, individuals, businesses, and organizations that have established charitable funds there, and has invested over $425 million in grants in the areas of health and human services, civic and economic development, education, arts and culture, and the environment. Learn more at GulfCoastCF.org.
ABOUT SARASOTA OPERA
This is Sarasota Opera’s 63rd Season of bringing world-class opera to Florida’s Gulf Coast. The company was launched in 1960 in the historic 320-seat Asolo Theater on the grounds of Sarasota’s Ringling Museum of Art. In 1984 the company moved into the former A.B. Edwards Theater—now the Sarasota Opera House. Since then, the company has gained an international reputation as one of the leading regional opera companies in the U.S. through initiatives such as the Masterworks Revival Series and the Verdi Cycle. The company’s Sarasota Youth Opera is the most comprehensive Youth Program in the U.S. The Sarasota Opera House, which underwent a $20 million renovation and rehabilitation in 2007, has been called “one of America’s finest venues for opera” by Musical America. Since 1983, the company has been under the artistic leadership of Victor DeRenzi and administrative leadership of General Director Richard Russell since 2012.
Sarasota Opera is sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture and the National Endowment for the Arts. Programs are paid for in part by Sarasota County Tourist Development Tax revenues.
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