Sarasota Opera's Record Ticket Sales

Sarasota can't get enough opera.

announced last week that its fall production of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly grossed about half a million dollars in ticket sales for the fall season, which set the bar for highest selling show since 2008 when the venue started fall operas.

The show ran Oct. 15 through Nov. 15. Four of the six performances sold out, according to a news release issued by the Opera.

A commonly performed show helped achieve that mark, a Sarasota Opera spokesman said.

"It's a very well known show and the most performed show in North America, so I think there's an elevated level of familiarity with it, and it's an accessible show," said Samuel Lowry, communications officer for Sarasota Opera.

"People coming to the opera for the first time, it's a great show to see," Lowry told Patch. "The story is familiar; even if you don't know opera, you'll know it from the music because you've heard the music in commercials and movies."

The opera noticed more returning subscribers and first-time subscribers in the fall, too, Lowry said. Ten percent of the audience at each performance were new to Sarasota Opera, and 290 new subscribers signed up for the winter season, he said.

Sarasota Opera is $300,000 ahead of where it was last year, he said.

The highest grossing opera ever at the was also a Puccini composition. The mark was set at the 2006 production of La bohème, Lowry said.

It's the spring season that really brings out the crowds, Lowry said, when from Feb. 11 through March 25, four productions will run simultaneously.

Maestro Victor DeRenzi's will start his 30th season in 2012 and will show his love of Verdi's operas as he works through what's known as a "Verdi cycle," Lowry said.

"By 2016, we'll play every note that Verdi has composed," he said.

Next season's installment is Otello. Other productions next year includes Carmen, Samuel Barber's Vanessa and Lucia di Lammermoor, he said.