Opera Tampa is the resident opera company of the Straz Center for the Performing Arts (formerly the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center).
Now in its 15th season, Opera Tampa produces and presents grand opera. The full-scale productions – generally of Italian opera – feature international performers, the Opera Tampa Orchestra and the 50-60 member Opera Tampa Chorus under the direction of composer-conductor Anton Coppola.
Judith Lisi, president of the Straz Center, also acts as managing director of Opera Tampa. Soprano and founder of V.O.I.C.Experience, Maria Zouves is associate director of Opera Tampa. Baritone Sherrill Milnes is Opera Tampa’s artistic advisor. Since 2007, the Opera Tampa Orchestra has been contracted and managed for the Center by IBEX Productions LLC, a Tampa-Based music production firm.
Opera Tampa performs in the Straz Center’s 2,500-seat Carol Morsani Hall, which was designed as a classic horseshoe opera house in the style of the grand opera houses of Europe. The acoustics in Morsani Hall were designed by Russell Johnson.
Famous quotes containing the word opera:
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)