+ Pastel painter searches for a good Sarasota garden
Sarasota painter Corinne Jo Fallacaro kicked off her solo exhibition this month at the Women’s Resource Center on Tuttle Avenue. Believe it or not, Fallacaro, a former graphic designer at Penthouse’s OMNI magazine in New York City, was a wild abstract expressionist before she began channeling her inner Manet after moving to rural Connecticut (and later Oyster Bay, in Sarasota).

Almost all of the impressionist pastels in the show were inspired by flower gardens in Fairfield County, Conn. Fallacaro, who moved to Florida four years ago, says she hasn’t found a Sarasota garden worth painting yet.

“I told me friends to just shoot me if I start painting flamingos,” Fallacaro joked. Her show, “Visions,” is up through March 30 at the Women’s Resource Center.

+ Sarasota Opera plans to stir the pot in 2011
Sarasota Opera is clearly paying attention to the buzz generated by “Hansel and Gretel” and “Joan of Arc.”
At an intimate press conference last week in the McCorkle Lounge, Maestro Victor DeRenzi announced the 2010-2011 opera season, starting with a revival of Puccini’s “La boheme,” and Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” and ending with Robert Ward’s 1961 Pulitzer-Prize-winning opera, “The Crucible,” and Verdi’s “I lombardi.”

Much like Sarasota Opera’s exhaustive Verdi Cycle, launched in 1989, “The Crucible” is part of a long-range artistic initiative focused on presenting American classic novels-turned-operas. Among the other contemporary operas being bandied about: “Vanessa,” “Of Mice and Men” and “The Scarlet Letter.”

Finally. All that required high-school reading is paying off.

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