Opera Naples pursues a permanent home on Bayshore Drive

Livio Ferrari and Jerry Goldberg have been dreaming of a local home for opera for nearly as long as they’ve lived in Naples. After nearly 20 years of talking about one, the two board members of Opera Naples are determined to build it — even if that takes another 20 years.

It has a partner dream: to incorporate the official American museum of legendary tenor Luciano Pavarotti, whose widow shares their goal.

“I may not be around to see all of it happen,” concedes Goldberg, a real estate developer who, at 88, has immersed himself in Opera Naples for more than 25 years. He served in roles from chairman of its board to fundraising host to interim executive director as needed. But his hope is to have the opera in its own theater after years as a performing arts nomad.

“It’s huge,” acknowledges Ferrari of their mission. “So, I don’t want to jump ahead of time. I’ll take it very easy, very slow, because I believe that in the past we have tried to move things forward too fast and it somehow doesn’t work. It has to be very steady.”

ALWAYS ON THE MOVE

Opera Naples currently rents stages for every major production, not an easy task in a city where the right spaces are rare and the cost high. The opera has performed everywhere from Gulf Coast High School to churches to Cambier Park softball field. Its most unusual venue: the three-story atrium of Miromar Design Center, where Lucia di Lammermoor was courted by Edgardo to a backdrop of home decor stores. The chorus had to run up a flight of stairs to sing for its famous wedding scene.

To Ferrari, who occasionally performs around Naples as a tenor vocalist, the city has always been a natural home for a dedicated venue. In his homeland of Italy, opera houses were the rule, not the exception, in cities of any size, and they had grown up through centuries with their municipalities.

“When I first moved to Naples in 2000, I told my wife at the time, ‘Let’s go to the opera.’ And she looked at me like I had three heads,” Ferrari recalls.

In Naples, he learned, the only operatic fare came from one-night touring company productions at Artis—Naples, then the Philharmonic Center for the Arts. The company was so substandard, Philharmonic Center CEO Myra Daniels paid its orchestra to sit out the performance and brought in the Naples Philharmonic to lend it quality.

Ferrari remembers, on his first visit, spotting the 18th-century characters with black sport wristwatches. “People were wearing Casios on the stage. It was absolutely pathetic.”

Goldberg had been steeped in opera a different way: “From the time I was a little boy, my father would listen to the Met (The Metropolitan Opera) on the radio on Saturdays. And so I heard opera singing from the time I can remember.”

He and his wife, interior designer Bronwen Adams, were regulars at the Washington National Opera when they lived there. They met Ferrari during his work as a personal trainer, and all three quickly became aligned with the founding of Opera Naples. But for Ferrari and Goldberg, the dream went beyond that. They wanted a dedicated theater.

NO HOME FOR BIG OPERA

In its early years, the opera offered its major productions at Artis—Naples, which Goldberg would have liked to have as a home base.

“As our primary residence, we would have leapt to the opportunity. But they had some things going on every night,” Goldberg says. That was not feasible for a grand opera, which needs the stage for three or four nights of technical and dress rehearsal.

When the pandemic shut down most other performing arts productions, Artistic Director Ramón Tebar persuaded the board consider a setting outdoors in 2021. Since then, its Festival Under the Stars has moved between the Cambier Park softball field and Baker Park in Naples. Both lack acoustic infrastructure and dressing rooms, and are vulnerable to the weather and the rumble of planes landing and departing at nearby Naples Airport. Despite the obstacles, the festival has done well, bringing in an estimated 5,000 attendees this year for operatic favorites such as Elixir of Love and Turandot.

Another major constraint has been time. The city of Naples has been as helpful as possible, they acknowledged, but the schedule on which it approves permits makes sponsor development and site planning difficult when corporate philanthropy budgets are being set by July for the following year.

The company owns a building, the Wang Opera Center on Linwood Avenue in Naples, which works for its popular youth workshop and studio operas, as well as administrative offices. But grand operas including La Boheme and Aida require dozens of cast members, multiple sets and audiences much larger than its 320-seat capacity.

A GLIMMER OF STARLIGHT

Both Ferrari and Goldberg have been biding their time until recently, when the stars began to align for them. First, Ferrari finagled an introduction to Nicoletta Mantovani Pavarotti, widow of the late tenor, who agreed Naples would be a good home for a center dedicated to her husband’s legacy. The Luciano Pavarotti Foundation, under her leadership, even reignited his international vocal competition here, an opportunity for a collaboration with Florida Gulf Coast University to host its semifinals. This year, it attracted 400 singers from around the world.

Then, a star tenor popular with the festival audiences here, Joseph Calleja, recommended Opera Naples look at the fledgling Grange Park Opera House in England. It was built and finished in 2017 for the equivalent of just under $16 million U.S. Using its plan could save a good deal for Opera Naples and bring potential donors a concrete vision — “put the horse before the cart,” as Ferrari described it. They hired its designer, Tim Ronalds Architects, to recreate it for Naples.

“This opera house, or arts center, is already done, and the team that designed it had already worked together successfully in other music halls, arts centers and opera houses. So, whenever we talk about the project, it’s not like we still need to figure it out … what it’s going to look like, what it’s going to be,” he says.

COSTS REMAIN A MOVING TARGET

It’s wisdom that could have come from Kristen Coury, the last arts leader to build a performance hall in Naples. Gulfshore Playhouse opened in 2024 on Goodlette-Frank Road only after 20 years of fundraising, productions, grant writing and advocacy from Coury, its founder.

“It takes a lot longer than anybody thinks it’s going to take to raise the money and to sell the idea and to sell the dream. Very few potential donors have the vision necessary to really see it,” she acknowledges. “So, until you’ve raised an aggregate amount of money in order to be able to actually hire an architect and get some renderings made, it’s very hard for people to see what the visionaries will see in their minds.”

She also counseled a constant reality check about costs. Gulfshore Playhouse’s initial estimate of its cost was $45 million. Two hurricanes and a pandemic later, the final cost was $72 million.

“It’s shocking how many times our budget changed because of a pandemic or because of a supply-chain issue or because of other things. So, in the logistics of it, you have to keep raising the bar in terms of the amount of the capital campaign.”

At this point, the supporters of a performing arts center with Opera Naples as its star tenant are above the ground floor. Opera Naples received a $1 million gift for its endowment fund and other support; another gift it is only allowed to describe as seven-figure, for the potential opera venue; and, in June, a $1.1 million Florida Legislature Local Funding Initiative Request an appropriation through Florida Cultural Facilities Programs.

Having the Pavarotti name headlining its vocal competition has given it a lift. Another came when Opera Naples’ Tebar, who has conducted in major opera houses around the world, was invited to conduct at America’s crown jewel, the Metropolitan Opera, for the autumn run of Puccini’s La Boheme Sept. 25-Oct. 31.

A POTENTIAL HOME

Then came a major, if coincidental, push from the local front. Collier County created a handsome boardwalk linking its 17-acre property at 4265 Bayshore Drive with Sugden Park and its ample space for cars. The biggest development came in July: It opened the lake-flanked parcels on the property to an “invitation to negotiate.” That gives the county leeway to either sell the land or award it as a lease for a use it feels meets the needs of the Community Redevelopment Agency district in which it’s located. Then, in September, the agency’s advisory committee unanimously recommended the full CRA, whose members are the Collier Board of County Commissioners, green-light a purchase.

Goldberg has had the location in mind for the theater for years, and several community surveys have voiced a preference for some sort of cultural center on the property. It nearly became one 10 years ago, when Bayshore Cultural and Performing Arts bid on the land for a multipurpose center, but the county insisted on a $5 million price tag. This time, both Ferrari and Goldberg feel, there is great potential for an agreement.

Theirs is a hilly road, the two acknowledged. To keep financial responsibilities clear, their appeal for multipurpose theater funding is under a separate nonprofit, known as Theater in the Garden Inc. That’s occasionally confusing to people who don’t know that their organization is building the theater, while Opera Naples, which will own the land, will lease the building from Theater in the Garden as a resident tenant.

Further, they’re appealing to a community that already has been tapped over the last six years for at least $124 million in nonprofit arts construction projects. Among them are the $72 million Gulfshore Playhouse; a $22 million renovation of The Naples Players’ Sugden Theatre; and $30 million for a planned Community School of Naples performing arts building and middle school.

They’re elated they will get the property their hearts are set on, the developable land of that 17-acre, double-lake parcel on Bayshore Drive. At a time when East Naples is seeing increased development, with multiple residential projects and brand names including Whole Foods and Home Depot coming in, Theater in the Garden supporters knew there was likely to be competition that outflanked them financially.

Both boards have been looking at properties all around Naples and are confident enough about this as their destination that they’re moving into capital campaign mode.

ACCEPT GIFTS; KEEP CONTROL

They may not have the serendipity Nancy Preis, general director of the newest opera house in the U.S., Opera in the Ozarks, has. She got a transformative gift — $37 million — from the Walton Family Foundation to build the glass-fronted theater that looks out over the mountains. It opened in 2025.

But the gift came with conditions. The foundation insisted on its own architect and construction teams, neither of whom had experience in opera, she said. Preis found herself being labeled “difficult” when she tried to inject critical features, such as a projection screen for supertitles.

“If there’s somebody that wants to pay for this, make sure that you retain the people who know something about opera houses and about opera and about theater,” she warns. “Make sure those people are listened to.”

And further, don’t economize by building too small. The Opera in the Ozarks building is a gorgeous facility, both visually and acoustically, she said. But because the donor wanted the entire theater built within the grant amount, it has only 302 seats.

“You can’t rent a theater that size,” she says of potential sustaining income. “Broadway touring musicals? Not going to happen.”

With its design for a 700- to 900-seat theater in place, Theater in the Garden doesn’t have that worry. Its first goal, furthermore, isn’t the opera house, but an open-air pavilion that can host the Festival Under the Stars on its own schedule.

“We’re looking at a phased development. We are 100% positive that we will have no trouble, upon acquiring land, immediately starting to build as soon as permits are available and complete the pavilion without any debt,” Goldberg says.

The pavilion also will give visitors a view of the open field where the performing arts theater eventually could rise. Even if it takes 20 years, both Ferrari and Goldberg know what they want to see as their center’s opening performance: Puccini’s dramatic classic, Tosca, which was Opera Naples inaugural production in 2006.

No one on this stage, Ferrari promised, will be wearing Casios.