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".
Benjamin Barber at Albert Schweitzer College (1959) and the London School of Economics (1957). Barber's father, Philip W. Barber, directed the New York City unit of the Federal Theatre Project, which produced plays including "Macbeth" and the Living Newspaper. His mother, Doris Frankel, was a playwright and wrote for television. Barber was also active as a playwright, lyricist (libretto for George Quincy's opera "Home and the River") and film-maker ("The Struggle for Democracy", with Patrick Watson, and "Music Inn", with Ben Barenholtz). Barber died on April 24, 2017, after a four-month battle with cancer. Barber was a Senior Research Scholar at The