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The core of the story is that of the widowed Dido feeling a revival of desire upon meeting the visiting warrior Aeneas. She loves, only to lose again when Aeneas is persuaded to sail away by a deceitful sorceress and her followers. The women are the focal point and have numerous opportunities to shine. As Dido’s maiden Belinda, soprano Lindsay Ohse is a steady thread from beginning to end. She confidently leads the chorus urging Dido to open up to Aeneas and is there at Dido’s death. Yes, spoiler alert, she dies in the end, but that shouldn’t be a big surprise. The lament of Dido’s final aria, “When I am laid in earth,” has enjoyed popular fame for more than 300 years as a peaceful resignation.
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.”
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.