Sarasota Opera Winter Opera Festival in February and March, usually offering four fully staged operas with the Sarasota Opera Orchestra. The repertoire includes standard works as well as lesser known operas. In March 2008, the Sarasota Opera House reopened after a $20 million renovation with Verdi's "Rigoletto", and in the same year, the company added its first fully staged fall production, Rossini's "The Barber of Seville" bringing the number of operas presented in a season to five. For the most part, the Fall operas have been popular favourites, but in 2012, it presented Daron Hagen's world premiere opera, "Little Nemo in Slumberland".
Opera buffa opera seria deals with gods and ancient heroes and only occasionally contained comic scenes, "opera buffa" involves the predominant use of comic scenes, characters, and plot lines in a contemporary setting. The traditional model for opera seria had three acts, dealt with serious subjects in mythical settings, as stated above, and used high voices (both sopranos and castrati) for principal characters, often even for monarchs. In contrast, the model that generally held for "opera buffa" was having two acts (as, for example, "The Barber of Seville"), presenting comic scenes and situations as earlier stated and using the lower male voices