- April 8, 2026
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As the Sarasota Opera prepares to celebrate the centennial of the Opera House, let’s pause before the victory lap to recall how close the city came to losing this Mediterranean-Revival architectural jewel.
Today, the Sarasota Opera House not only is the home of the world-renowned Sarasota Opera, it serves as a venue for other arts groups. Among them are the Sarasota Orchestra and its summer Sarasota Music Festival for up-and-coming classical musicians, as well as Sarasota Ballet, Perlman Music Program Suncoast and chamber music festival La Musica.
In short, the Opera House has become the cultural heart of Sarasota. It’s the place where Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe hosts its annual tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and where the Arts and Cultural Alliance holds presentations to highlight the importance of the arts to Sarasota’s economy.
“The Sarasota Opera House plays a uniquely central role in the city’s civic and cultural life because it is both a historic anchor and a living stage,” says Architecture Sarasota President Morris “Marty” Hylton III. “Originally built as the Edwards Theatre, it has always been a place where the community gathers, not just for entertainment, but for shared experience.”
Hylton describes the Opera House as a “kind of civic living room” that “brings together residents, visitors, artists and students, creating a space where culture is experienced collectively. That’s especially important in a city like Sarasota, where the arts are central to our identity and economy.”
In 2023, PBS TV station WEDU held a public screening of “The Sarasota Experience,” Shaun Greenspan’s documentary about 100 years of Sarasota County’s history, at the Opera House. Greenspan got the chance to introduce his film in the same auditorium where Cecile B. DeMille’s film about the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus, “The Greatest Show on Earth," premiered in 1952.
Despite the Opera House’s current splendor and stature, it was nearly lost, not once but twice, according to Sarasota historian Jeff LaHurd, who the Sarasota Opera commissioned to write a book in honor of the building’s centennial.
The first time was in 1972, when bulldozers were ready to raze the theater built in 1926 by Sarasota mayor and developer A.B. Edwards as a venue for movies, vaudeville and other live performances. First known as the Edwards Theatre, it was renamed the Florida Theatre in 1936.
During its heyday, which lasted until mid-1960s, the theater hosted many high-profile entertainers and events, including the Tommy Dorsey Band, “The Greatest Show on Earth” premiere and a concert by Elvis Presley in 1956.
But by the 1970s, downtown was down on its luck and so was the Florida Theatre. “With the current real estate boom, it’s hard to imagine, but back in the 1970s, one politician said you could play a game of marbles in the middle of Main Street,” LaHurd says.
As the Florida Theatre’s demolition loomed in those days of urban decay, Dwaine and Patricia Glenn purchased the building for $83,000 to house their Radio Engineering Institute, saving it for the first time.
REI operated a simulated radio station to train its students. It used the theater’s screen to show Christian films. The school leased out offices on the second floor to organizations including the Asolo Opera Guild, the predecessor to the Sarasota Opera.
The second time the Med-Rev building at 61 N. Pineapple Ave. narrowly escaped the wrecking ball was in 1979. At that time, developer Jay Foley, who later bought and renovated The Gator Club on Main Street and several other nightclubs, was eyeing the REI property.
LaHurd says Foley was considering the site for an upscale private fitness club. It’s not clear whether the former Florida Theatre would have been destroyed or just gutted, but its days were clearly numbered.
While Foley and other developers were circling, Deane Allyn, president of the Sarasota Opera Society, was spearheading efforts to find a permanent home for Asolo Opera. The company had been performing in The Ringling’s Historic Asolo Theater since 1960 but was outgrowing the space.
Before a developer could make a deal, Allyn persuaded Opera Guild chair Leo Rogers to wire $50,000 as a down payment for the purchase of 61 N. Pineapple Ave. for $173,000.
At the time, Rogers was at his summer home in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. But with the help of Allyn, a deal was negotiated that gave the Glenns a three-year lease to continue operating their radio school. It also provided the opera company time to raise funds to renovate 61 N. Pineapple Ave.
Engineer and philanthropist Don Smally led a capital campaign to raise funds for the building’s $3 million renovation, LaHurd says.
Thanks to the efforts of Allyn, Rogers, Smally and other benefactors, the former Edwards Theatre became the new home of the Sarasota Opera. It was during the period when the Opera was moving from the Historic Asolo Theater to its new downtown location that Victor DeRenzi was hired as artistic director in 1982. Under DeRenzi’s direction, Sarasota Opera would become the only opera company in the world to perform all of Verdi’s operas, a feat completed in 2016.
To write his 100-year history of the Opera House, historian LaHurd combed newspaper archives, documents, and other records stored at the Sarasota County History Center.
He also conducted interviews with key players and mined the research he has accumulated for the more than 20 books about Sarasota history that he has written over the years.
When LaHurd was growing up Sarasota in the 1950s, there were two movie theaters downtown — the Ritz Theatre, which had opened as the Virginian Theatre for vaudeville in 1906, and the Florida Theatre, which he says was the fancier of the two.
Hurd was often sent by his parents to spend Saturdays at the Ritz, where he saw a double feature of B movies, featuring sci-fi characters such as Buck Rogers.
His first memory of the Florida Theatre was when his mom took him and his cousin to see “The Wizard of Oz.” Even though the movie was made in 1939, it regularly played in movie theaters during the 1950s before becoming a holiday staple on network TV in the 1960s.
LaHurd was impressed by the Florida Theatre. “It was such an upscale-looking place,” he says. Years later, when the building was undergoing renovations after being purchased by the Opera, Hurd and his wife snuck into the balcony, he says. From 2007-08, the Opera House underwent a $20 million renovation under Sarasota Opera Executive Director Susan B. Danis.
During his research about Sarasota’s history, Hurd’s formed some definite opinions. First and foremost is that other landmark buildings in Sarasota could have been saved the way the Opera House was.
If things had turned out differently, the John Ringling Hotel could have celebrated its centennial last year. Originally built in 1925 as the El Vernona Hotel at 111 N. Tamiami Trail, the Ringling Hotel was demolished in 1998 to make way for a Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
Still, LaHurd believes that “the crowd that stayed at the Ritz-Carlton helped make the Opera what it is today."
“When they came to Sarasota on vacation, rich people needed something to do besides boating, fishing, golf, tennis and going to the beach. They needed the arts,” he adds.
Another one of LaHurd’s realizations is that the city’s acquisition of land in the early 1990s to create Five Points Park across the street from the Opera helped make downtown a destination once again. LaHurd says much of the credit goes to Jack Gurney, a former city commissioner and mayor of Sarasota.
In keeping with the Opera House’s dual role as a beacon of high culture and a welcoming venue for community events, there will be two celebrations for its centennial. The first will be a concert on April 11, followed by a gala at Michael’s On The Bay at Selby Gardens.
The next day, there will be a public screening of a documentary about the Opera House’s centennial. The free event will include a presentation by Architecture Sarasota’s Hylton, who was interviewed for the documentary.
Before joining Architecture Sarasota in 2022, Hylton was a preservationist and an academic. He’s a PowerPoint master and an eloquent speaker, so his talk should be lively.
Playing devil’s advocate, we asked Hylton why we should care about the Opera House. He says the building “bridges Sarasota’s past and present. Architecturally, it tells the story of the city’s early ambitions when it was evolving into a cultural destination. But it’s not a static monument. It continues to evolve as a vibrant home for opera, performance and public life.”
Adds Hylton: “At its 100th anniversary, the Opera House reminds us where we have been, actively shapes who we are as a community today, and who we aspire to be in the future.”
