Next week, Gulfshore Opera will perform Donizetti’s grand opera “Lucia di Lammermoor” at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall and Artis Naples. Founder, Producer and Artistic Director Steffanie Pearce can barely contain her excitement for area opera lovers – and those new to the art form – to see this tour de force with Metropolitan Opera singer Susanne Burgess in the role of Lucia.
“Gulfshore Opera is the only production company who is producing full-scale grand opera at the two leading professional venues in our region,” said Pearce. “We work in partnership with the Naples Philharmonic and we do original sets and costumes for our productions.”
Pearce established Southwest Florida’s first opera company in 2005 – Opera Naples. Not long after she and Opera Naples parted company in 2014, she founded Gulfshore Opera with the intention of bringing high-quality opera to Collier, Lee and Charlotte counties in a collaborative, inclusive environment.
“We’re a regional touring company,” Pearce said. “We have 30 to 40 events per year. We tour over 20 different venues in the three counties with everything from very friendly popular community concerts in close-to-home venues in eight different communities within those three counties to our Taste of Opera dinner, which is a private dinner in a beautiful private club.”
Since 2005, Pearce has been working assiduously to cultivate a love of opera across Southwest Florida. In her estimation, this area’s appreciation of the art form has grown by leaps and bounds.
“The appetite for going to opera performances has grown along with the cultural sophistication of our community over the last 23 years,” said Pearce.
Pearce shares an emphasis on developing emerging local talent and introducing new audiences to opera with the legendary Luciano Pavarotti. She met him several times, including in 1984 when she won the tenor’s International Voice Competition in Philadelphia.
“He heard me in San Diego and paid for my flight to go to Philadelphia to be in the international finals with 200 people from around the world,” Pearce said. “It was truly huge. They literally flew 200 singers from all around the world to Philadelphia for the finals, and Pavarotti was there for every minute of it. He would sometimes coach you on the side. [8:59] Ask you who you’d been studying with. And then the winners were given roles in operas at the opera company in Philadelphia, which is a little over a 2,000 seat theater with the Philadelphia Orchestra. So that was a huge, huge prize to win that. I got to understudy Musetta in the 'La boheme' that he was doing. It was a real career starter.”
Now, Steffanie Pearce is paying Pavarotti’s largesse forward through Gulfshore Opera.
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“Gulfshore Opera is celebrating our 11th season,” said Pearce. “As a tri-county regional opera, we use people from the region as much as we can. So we are developing emerging artists who are based between Orlando and Miami for a lot of the things we do. However, when we do a really large opera or our gala, we cast that internationally with leading artists from the opera industry.”
In addition to grand opera and its “Taste of Opera” productions, Gulfshore Opera also tours chamber operas.
“These are smaller scale opera,” Pearce explains. “This year we did the regional premiere of the opera “Rusalka,” which is the same story as the Hans Christian Anderson “Little Mermaid” story, and we did that in three venues – one in Punta Gorda [at Burnt Store Presbyterian], one in Arts Bonita and then downtown Naples at the Norris Center.”
“We have our own GO Opera Chorus,” Pearce added. “We have a children’s chorus, which we use when we have an opera that calls for one.”
Pearce is especially proud of Gulfshore Opera’s community engagement activities.
“That’s a whole different division of what we do, and that involves our Harmony Choir, which is an after-school program for at-risk youth. We partner with the Boys and Girls Club, Youth Haven and the YMCA to bring choral music to kids in an after-school setting [at six locations in Lee, Collier and Charlotte counties], and then those kids get opportunities to perform not only at the facility where they’re having the after-school program but sometimes in some of our concerts.”
For example, the Harmony Choir will be included in Gulfshore Opera’s “Journey through the Americas,” a free outdoor concert tour across Southwest Florida from May 14 to 18, made possible by the generous support of the Collier Community Foundation and Cape Coral Community Foundation. This long-envisioned project brings professional artists to local band shells, offering vibrant performances at Marco Island’s Veteran’s Park Bandshell (May 14), St. Leo’s Auditorium in Bonita Springs (May 15), Babcock Ranch Bandstand in Founders Square (May 16), Cambier Park (May 17) and Gulf Theater in Punta Gorda (May 18).
“We are a community partner in many ways,” Pearce noted. “We’re enriching the quality of life of our community from the children who can’t afford music lessons to the elderly who are shut in in senior residences to the general public who think they don’t like opera because they’ve never experienced it.”
That’s a sentiment memorably expressed in the film “Pretty Woman” when Edward Lewis said to Vivian, “People’s reactions to opera the first time they see it is very dramatic. They either love it or they hate it. If they love it, they will always love it. If they don't, they may learn to appreciate it — but it will never become part of their soul.”
“It is definitely a niche, and it takes exposure to this art form to begin to comprehend it and what its value is, and how exciting it can be,” Pearce conceded. “So a lot of what we do is just expose people to the sound, the power and the passion of a classically trained voice. In some cases, that’s through singing a Beatles song or a popular Latin song. So we do a lot of build-up activities in the form of these community concerts to get people more familiar with who we are and the fact that we are approachable. We’re not this stuffy group that you have to wear your diamonds to come and see one of our shows.”
That notwithstanding, who wouldn’t want to wear the $250,000 diamond and ruby necklace that Edward gives Vivian to wear to “La Traviata” in “Pretty Woman”?
But bling is certainly optional.
“Opera is theater,” Pearce remarked. “It’s sung theater. Today’s musical theater, the Broadway shows and the shows that come out of London, Andrew Lloyd Webber and all, are very much rooted in opera. You know, there was a transition, I would say, starting in around 1920 with ‘Show Boat,' which was considered the first true American musical, but which very much came from the opera and then operetta form and has continued to grow and modernize to the American music theater.”
Speaking of Verdi’s “La Traviata,” Pearce played Violetta Valery during her time as prima donna.
Before focusing her energy on producing and directing opera, Pearce enjoyed a long international singing career with Opera Marseille, Opera Lisbon, The Opera Company of Philadelphia, and San Diego Opera. She performed at major theaters, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
In 2016, Pearce was honored with the WGCU Makers Award. Chosen as one of five women in all of Southwest Florida, she was recognized as an authentic, passionate, and inspiring woman who will leave a memorable, lasting impact on the people, economy, and culture of Southwest Florida.
In November 2023, Steffanie was selected as one of Gulfshore Life’s Women of the Year. They honored her as an arts visionary known for bringing opera to Southwest Florida, ensuring equitable access to the arts, and shaping our community with her outstanding contributions over the last 20 years.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.