The Sarasota Opera plans to renovate its stage and orchestra pit, and the improvements could alter the looks of the artistic product. This well-run company's 1,000-seat theatre, built in the 1920s, is an agreeable place for opera and gives the lie to the notion that economic realities require American opera houses to seat thousands. But its stage has practically no depth, a defect especially conspicuous as the company continues its traversal of the Verdi canon, due for completion in 2013.

The larger stage will come in time for Aida and Don Carlo (as well as Don Carlos) but how will the company make use of it? The able conductor Vincent De Renzi, Sarasota's artistic director, approaches operas with a reverence that extends to stagings and makes Sarasota a haven for those repelled by Regie Theater (director theatre). But the result is not especially happy in the case of Stiffelio, an opera that seemed irretrievably lost until the late 1960s but has since been claimed by most leading opera houses.

Its story of a Protestant minister who pardons his adulterous wife from the pulpit (by quoting the story of Jesus and the adulteress) sets it apart from other Verdi. But Brian Robertson's conventional staging served to emphasise its more routine elements - offended honour rather than sources of forgiveness. Troy Hourie's busy renditions of Gothic churchly structures were unflatteringly lit, and Howard Tsvi Kaplan's costumes looked old-fashioned for an opera originally intended to have the novelty of contemporary dress. As Stiffelio, Todd Geer registered strongly when granting absolution, but earlier his singing was patchy. Marie-Adele McArthur produced some fine, secure high notes as his wife Lina and strident tones lower down. Tim Mix brought a strong, clear baritone to Lisa's father Stankar, who deems himself so disgraced by her peccadillo that he murders her partner in crime. Brian Jauhiainen's bass served imposingly as Jörg, who struck me as a prototype for the mystical monk in Don Carlo.

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