It was the result of 18 months of research through surveys, personal interviews and focus groups.The Seed Award program was the flagship funding program of The Sprout Fund. The change "strengthens our link to the international recognition of Sarasota and its reputation as a cultural community," president Joseph McKenna says. The first-prize winner was baritone Lawrence Harris, a onetime NFL lineman turned opera singer.įlorida West Coast Symphony, based in Sarasota and celebrating its 60th anniversary this season, has changed its name to the Sarasota Orchestra. Petersburg Opera artistic director Mark Sforzini. The competition, now in its 20th year, was founded by soprano Carmela Altamura, who was among the judges, along with Opera Tampa conductor Anton Coppola and St. Petersburg native received his bachelor's degree from Eckerd College and his master's from the Dallas Theological Seminary in Texas. Donovan, a fixture on the local opera scene who in the past year has sung Wagner in Tarpon Springs and soloed with the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay, won the $3,500 prize after performing arias by Puccini and Verdi. Petersburg Opera's production of Don Giovanni, scored a third-place finish last month in the Altamura/Caruso International Voice Competition in New York. (727) 895-6620 .īass-baritone Todd Donovan, who recently appeared in St. $20 for previews $24 for students, seniors $34.50 general admission. The Wild Party has previews Wednesday and Thursday and opens Friday and runs through Sept. "We will take risks in both our selection of material and the way we present the works we choose,'' he says in a program note. Other plays Davis wants to do include such off-the-beaten-path works as The Firebugs by Swiss playwright Max Frisch and Caroline, Or Change, a musical by Tony Kushner. "It's an investment in showing the community what we intend to do and the level of work that can be done if you put those resources into a production.'' "We set out to show what we think theater should be and what you need to do to claim that you're doing professional theater,'' Davis says. The company - whose principals are Davis, executive producer Kevin Lane and managing director Jim Sorenson - has a Web site at that says it raised more than $27,000 in online donations. Most of the 15-person cast are members of the Actors Equity union and will be paid $444 a week. Music director Luerne Herrera leads a five-piece band (piano, bass, drums, trumpet and reeds). The Wild Party has a budget of between $40,000 and $60,000, according to Davis. "I think the LaChiusa version makes the party an allegory or a microcosm of the world outside of the party in a way that is stronger than the Lippa version, which focuses more on relationships of the characters and their personal stories,'' says Davis, who has acted with many bay area theater companies and was director of musical theater at Blake School of the Arts in Tampa for five years. There was a production of the Lippa show in 2006 at the Palladium Theater in St. Neither did particularly well with audiences, who may have been understandably confused. Both were called The Wild Party and premiered in 2000, both with starry casts in New York. In one of the oddities of theater history, two musicals were made from the March poem, not just the one by LaChiusa but also another by Andrew Lippa. "I think it gives them more of a stake in what happens when things start to fall apart.'' "I think the strength of this concept is that the audience will feel like they're inside the party instead of voyeuristically looking at these people,'' Davis says. There will be a preshow cocktail party and late-night performances on Fridays and Saturdays. The bathtub gin flows, and there are lots of drugs to be had in this "room full of strangers who call themselves friends."Īnd the audience of about 100 will be "immersed'' in the debauched scene at the gallery, which has presented theater in the past. When they throw a party, the raffish crowd that shows up includes a faded diva named Dolores, a pair of Jewish producers, a lesbian stripper, a prizefighter, a gay piano duo and a "third-rate Valentino" who takes a shine to Queenie. It's about a vaudeville dancer named Queenie and her thuggish boyfriend, Burrs, a blackface clown. The Wild Party is based on an epic Jazz Age poem by Joseph Moncure March, whose tabloid yarn of small-time theater folk and grifters on a binge was banned in Boston when it was first published in 1928.
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