- In 1902, train service between Tampa and Sarasota began.

The crown jewel of the city was to become a grand theater, a landmark that has endured 100 years, a tribute to architecture, performing arts and the enduring spirit of community.

[Music] - The Edwards Theater is named for Arthur Britton, or A.B.

Edwards.

He was a prominent civic figure.

He was the first mayor of the consolidated City of Sarasota.

He helped create the county of Sarasota.

He served as the first head of the Chamber of Commerce.

Sarasota was booming at the time.

The boom started, probably with the opening of the Miramar Apartments and Hotel in 1923 and 1924, and all at once Sarasota was thriving with people and construction was going on.

- A building permit was granted in 1925.

Less than four months later, on April 10th, 1926, the Edwards Theater opened on North Pineapple Avenue in downtown Sarasota.

- When the theater opened, silent films ruled.

All the greats came here: Chaplin, Clara Bow, Rudolph, Valentino, all of those films were shown here, and The Jazz Singer was the first movie that had sound, and it was a huge hit and showed for several nights and really revived the movie going audience.

[Music] - Only five months after the theater opened a catastrophic hurricane packing 150 mile per hour winds made landfall.

The theater was heavily damaged, the real estate market collapsed, and a cycle of booms and busts that would plague the city and the theater for the rest of the 20th century had begun.

- After all that growth, the Great Depression hits and people lose their livelihoods.

They lose their resource, their financial resources.

But it seems that many stay and that we don't have any kind of major de-population of the community and the arts continue.

- Growth and prosperity returned.

Sarasota was back on stage, bigger and better than ever.

[Music] - At that time, in the 1950s, the Edwards had become the Florida Theater.

Well, when The Greatest Show on Earth was filmed here, all of a sudden the focus of America was on Sarasota.

[Music] - As the postwar decade of the 50s ended and the 1960s set in.

Unresolved social inequities like civil rights and economic trends like urban flight took their toll on downtown Sarasota.

Once again, the pendulum was swinging from boom to bust.

The Florida Theater was a high profile symbol of the decline.

- So in 1979, the Asolo Opera Guild bought the theater for $173,000, and they began the process of turning it into an opera house.

When I entered this theater, I thought this could be a place for an opera company.

I saw there weren't any...any chairs in the opera house.

The theater was had a lot of construction to be done for it, but I thought, if I have an opera house like this and I can work in an opera house like this, I could hopefully build this company and also help build the city.

So really, 1984 was a seminal year in downtown Sarasota because with this opera house opening up and becoming a destination in downtown, it sparked a revival of this downtown Sarasota.

Now, opera lovers are obsessive people.

They are people who go around from opera company to opera company, collecting titles in their little bag of operas that they've seen.

So they started to come to Sarasota.

The company started to get international attention, and then add to it Maestro's passion for Verdi and the decision to do every single work that Verdi wrote.

It created a destination for people who loved opera.

[Opera music] [Applause] - Over 40 years ago, Maestro had this vision of giving kids a chance to learn about opera, to learn at a young age of what what an incredible art form this is.

But of course, our crowning glory is we have for decades now been doing a fully staged opera.

So these kids are getting this incredible opportunity to learn from professionals in the field about opera, about being on stage.

- I think as our society changes, opera and opera houses have become more important than they've ever been.

Concert halls are the only places where we can all come together, where we can all share a common experience in a way that makes us what we are as people.

[Singing in Italian] - For 100 years, this grand concert hall has endured a testament to the community and performing arts in Sarasota.

[Music] - To learn more about Sarasota Opera, visit their website, sarasotaopera.org.