Lovers torn apart in Verdi’s ‘Luisa Miller’ at Sarasota Opera Jay Handelman Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Sarasota Opera Artistic Director Victor DeRenzi is certainly one of the world’s experts on the works of composer Giuseppe Verdi. He is, after all, the only person to have conducted every work that Verdi wrote as part of Sarasota Opera’s 28-year Verdi Cycle. Still, he blames Verdi himself for a lack of attention and popularity for “Luisa Miller,” the 14th of his 37 operas, first produced in 1849. The company’s third production of the season is “the one that’s not appreciated as much as it should be,” DeRenzi said. “That’s Verdi’s fault. He wrote so many great operas, and people are going to do ‘La traviata,’ ‘Tosca,’ ‘Aida’ and others first.” Sarasota Opera last produced “Luisa Miller” in 1999, 10 years into the Verdi Cycle, but DeRenzi is studying it as if it’s new to him, as he does with any project.