HISTORIC ASOLO THEATER
A return to glory for Sarasota's grand jewel
Sarasota Herald Tribune, Last modified: June 25, 2006 12:00AM. By CHARLIE HUISKING
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Performances in the newly restored Historic Asolo Theater won't begin until October. But
on Thursday, the theater itself will receive a standing ovation.
Hundreds of guests will gather on the Historic Asolo stage inside the theater's new home,
the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art visitors' pavilion. When the curtains part, they
will be among the first to see the results of a two-year restoration and reinstallation.
For longtime residents in the audience, the view of the richly ornamented,
horseshoe-shaped 18th-century Italian theater will be familiar.
For decades, the Historic Asolo, then located in a 1950s building elsewhere on the museum
grounds, was the focal point of Sarasota's cultural life. The Asolo Theatre Company
performed there for almost 30 years before moving in 1989 to its current home, the FSU
Center for the Performing Arts.
The Sarasota Opera Company had its roots there, as did the La Musica chamber-music
festival. And long before art-house films and foreign movies could be rented at the corner
video store, they were screened in the theater's Monday-night movie series.
The Historic Asolo is often referred to as a jewel-box theater. But audiences have never
seen it sparkle as it does now, in freshly painted colors of crimson, gold, silver and
mint green.
During the restoration, years of grime were cleared from the proscenium arch that frames
the stage, and from the 72 painted pine-wood panels that make up the curving interior of
the three-tiered, 260-seat theater.
Hundreds of ornamental pieces that had deteriorated were recast. The ruby-like medallions,
the carved smiling suns, wreaths and musical lyres, the vivid paintings of flowers
springing out of their carved gold-leaf baskets -- all now clamor for the audience's
attention.
"The theater is a work of art in itself," said Dwight Currie, curator of theater
programming for the museum. "It deserved its own opening night. And it's best viewed
from the stage. That's why we're having everyone gather there."
Constructed in a castle
The theater was constructed in 1798, inside a castle in Asolo, an Italian hill town near
Venice.
The castle was once the home of Caterina Cornaro, an exiled queen of Cypress. Her portrait
graces the front of what was the theater's royal box, flanked by decorative gold and
silver ornaments. On the panels nearby are drawings of Italian writers and poets,
including Dante and Petrarch.
The great actress Eleonora Duse performed in the Asolo in 1885, and the poet Robert
Browning, an Asolo resident, was enchanted by the theater.
But eventually, it came to be viewed as an over-decorated relic of an earlier time. In
1930, the interior pieces were dismantled and sold to a Venetian antique dealer, Adolph
Loewi.
The panels remained in storage for two decades, until A. Everett "Chick" Austin,
the Ringling's first curator, purchased them for the museum in 1950 for $8,000.
A friend of Loewi's, Austin had learned of the theater's existence years earlier. "I
yearned to own it, and never forgot how beautiful it was," Austin said.
A brilliant, charismatic man, Austin was regarded as one of America's foremost museum
directors. He once told a Sarasota reporter that "The function of a museum is more
... than merely showing pictures ... The museum is the place to integrate the arts and
bring them alive."
To that end, he opened the theater in 1952 in the museum's auditorium with a performance
of two comic operas, "Bastien et Bastienne" and "La Serva Padrona."
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune called the evening "the most artistic, most interesting
and most colorful gala night in the history of Florida, as well as Sarasota."
By the time the theater was reinstalled in its own building behind the museum in 1958,
Austin had died. But the museum's new director, Kenneth Donahue, staged an opening night
that would have delighted his predecessor.
Julius Rudel, conductor of the New York City Opera, came to Sarasota to conduct a
performance of Mozart's "Abduction from the Seraglio," featuring the great tenor
of the day, Robert Rounseville.
A post-performance celebration at C d'Zan, the Ringlings' mansion on the museum grounds,
featured circus acts and fireworks over the bay. Life magazine covered the event in a
multi-page photo spread.
Attending the performance that night was the widow of Josef Turnau, the founder of a New
York chamber-opera company. Thanks to that connection, the Turnau Opera Company would
perform in the Historic Asolo for 13 years, until the founding of the Asolo Opera Company,
the forerunner of today's Sarasota Opera.
Florida State University's theater department presented student productions in the museum
throughout the 1950s. In 1960, FSU founded a summertime theater program in the Historic
Asolo. The year-round, professional Asolo Theatre Company was established in 1966.
Saving a treasure
After the Asolo Theatre Company moved to its new home in 1989, the Historic Asolo was used
for lectures and other museum educational programs. The backstage area and part of the
stage were converted into storage space for artwork, making further performances
impossible.
The theater, and the building that housed it, continued to deteriorate. Citing safety
concerns, the museum, which by that time was operated by FSU, closed the building in 2001.
But thanks in part to the interest of then-FSU President Talbot "Sandy"
D'Alemberte, who had attended many plays in the Historic Asolo, the restoration of the
theater became one of the elements in a new museum master plan.
The process began with the cleaning and disassembly of the theater by Evergreene Painting
Studios, a firm that worked on the restoration of Broadway's New Amsterdam Theatre.
Beginning in 2004, four panels at a time were delivered to the museum's conservation lab
for restoration. Conservator Michelle Scalera and her assistants, David Piurek and Shay
Sampson, spent the next two years working meticulously on the project.
Scalera feels particularly close to the Historic Asolo. Back in 1984, when a Ringling
director raised questions about the authenticity of the theater pieces, Scalera
investigated, and determined that most panels were indeed centuries old. In her report,
Scalera urged that the theater be restored.
"Michelle's spirit and passion have been the glue that has held this project
together," said Jack Whelan, manager and owner's representative for all of the
construction projects at the Ringling museum. "I think her enthusiasm has been
infectious; it's helped everyone work at their highest level."
"I love this theater," Scalera said, speaking over the noise of a construction
crew in the orchestra level earlier this month.
"I'm thrilled with the integrity with which this project has been carried out. It
needed to be a restoration of the highest quality, out of respect for Chick Austin and his
vision.
"And I can't help but think how pleased John Ringling would have been to see this. It
doesn't compete with the things he did, but it complements them."
Vintage theater, modern setting
Audiences will enter the restored theater from the main lobby of the visitors' pavilion,
an $11 million, contemporary-style structure that opened earlier this year (the
restoration of the theater itself cost $300,000, and an additional $200,000 was spent on
equipment).
Museum visitors will be able to tour the theater beginning later this summer, but plans
aren't definite yet.
A grand-opening gala performance will be held Oct. 6, featuring opera singers Susan
Graham, Kristin Clayton and Jake Heggie.
Several local groups, including the FSU/Asolo Conservatory, the Westcoast Black Theatre
Troupe and the Artist Series of Sarasota, will be performing there during the fall and
winter.
And fittingly, the Asolo Theatre Company will present a one-man show in the theater. Even
the Monday movie series is coming back.
The theater won't look exactly the way it did before. The seating in the three tiers that
surround the orchestra is no longer partitioned into boxes. That may have been cozy, but
some audience members had to look around posts to see the stage. "The sightlines will
be much better now," Currie said.
The theater will have comfortable dressing rooms and a loading dock, two features it
lacked before. While the building design and budget didn't allow for a so-called "fly
system" to accommodate complicated sets, the stage itself is larger than before, and
there's more room backstage too.
Marty Petlock, a former lighting director for the Asolo Theatre Company, was blown away
during his recent visit to the restored theater.
"It's just breathtaking," said Petlock, now technical production manager for the
Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall.
"I think back to those times (in the 1990s) when I saw the theater deteriorating,
looking so sad and forlorn. To see it now -- well, it does my heart good. I just glow when
I look at it."
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