The classical season here keeps the same calendar as the snowbirds, roughly fall through spring, and most of it happens in a handful of big performing arts centers.
Tampa Bay and South Florida
In Tampa, the Straz Center opened on the Hillsborough River in 1987 as the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. It is one of three homes for The Florida Orchestra, which also plays the Mahaffey Theater in St. Pete and Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater.
The Arsht Center in Miami opened in 2006 and is home to Florida Grand Opera, which also takes productions to the Broward Center and the Kravis Center. The Kravis opened in downtown West Palm Beach in 1992, on the old Connie Mack Field site, and anchors the Palm Beach season. Across Biscayne Bay, the New World Symphony, an orchestral academy for young musicians, plays its own hall in Miami Beach, the New World Center.
Orlando and beyond
Steinmetz Hall opened at the Dr. Phillips Center in downtown Orlando in 2022 and is home to the Orlando Philharmonic. Jacksonville, Sarasota and Naples keep orchestras of their own, and Sarasota has an opera house downtown.
A night at any of them means garage parking and a dress code that is mostly whatever you would wear to a nice dinner. Weekend matinees are common, too, and they make the drive home a lot easier.
