ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.—Mark Sforzini’s unfinished opera is about a complicated relationship.
Daisy Buchanan—you’ve heard of her—is an irrepressible teen. She is drawn to Jay Gatsby—you’ve heard of him—an enigmatic, though problematic, wealthy older man.
Sforzini labored over “Daisy,” his operatic prequel to “The Great Gatsby,” for more than a year. It was commissioned by a man he trusted. Then, one day, the checks stopped coming. The opera stopped cold.
Thousands of opera fans are attending the St. Petersburg Opera for performances this weekend. They are watching Sforzini conduct Mozart, unaware of this albatross in mothballs, tucked into files on an old laptop.
It has a song about the sweetness of love and life in it.
“There is this aria of regret . . .” Sforzini said. “We find that there’s this catharsis. She married the wealthy man. . . . It’s kind of like, ‘Don’t make the same mistake.’ ”
This is the story.
Opera fans know Mark Sforzini.
At 46, he is a highly visible figure in the Tampa Bay area music scene. He is a co-founder of the St. Petersburg Opera Company, now in its 10th season, and conductor of the Tampa Bay Symphony.
Sforzini carries an air of the carefree. He is a natural ham who enjoys open rehearsals and lectures, who has worn Bedazzled shirts on stage.
The son of an aerospace engineer who taught at Auburn University, Sforzini grew up in Auburn, Ala. He played the piano, then the bassoon.
Performance, especially at the highest level, was his life. At 10, he became a World Hula Hoop champion, besting 16-year-olds. Sforzini was also a state diving champion. For two years in a row, he won gold and silver medals in separate events, yet was disappointed.
He wanted two golds in the same year.
He joined the Florida Orchestra in 1992. He was the orchestra’s principal bassoonist for 15 years. He composed music and served as the conductor of the Crested Butte Mountain Theater in Colorado.
Then he met Doyle McClendon.
Doyle McClendon was one of the Tampa Bay area’s largest arts donors. His contributions helped fund the Sarasota Opera and the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg, among others.
The former Air Force captain had owned a successful software company in Washington, D.C. McClendon portrayed himself as a Renaissance man, and implied he had been in the CIA. No one knows for sure.
McClendon could be assertive, confident, caustic and blunt. Employees respected and feared him, said Mary Alice McClendon, his ex-wife.
In 2007, he sold the McClendon Corp., which offered top-secret technical assistance to clients like the CIA and National Security Agency, for $66 million.
That same year, McClendon and Mary Alice underwrote the Sarasota Opera’s production of Madama Butterfly and brought the Cleveland Orchestra to the Mahaffey Theater. Most of the time, they gave anonymously.
Then he met Mark Sforzini.
Act One
The fascination with Gatsby, the character, was all McClendon. He left it up to Sforzini to work out the plot, relishing a behind-the-scenes role.
He sensed in Sforzini a restless talent that still needed room to grow. And Sforzini wanted the challenge.
“I had a desire to be involved in the musical creation process beyond rendering one part in the score,” Sforzini said. “He came along at a time and probably sensed that boredom.”
