Everyone seems to believe it: Naples loves opera.

Enthusiasts gobble up season tickets for the Philharmonic’s handful of touring shows. They fill recitals sponsored by the Naples Opera Society the second Tuesday of the month. They drive to Miami and Sarasota — or Orlando or West Palm or fly far beyond that — for the volume, and perhaps quality, of professional productions they can’t get at home.

Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that this weekend a new opera company, the city’s first, makes its debut on a Naples stage.

“Naples prides itself on being a jewel and culturally rich community,” says Steffanie Pearce, founding director of Opera Naples, which presents its first full-scale opera, “Tosca,” on Sunday. “There’s so much in the fine arts here and having its own opera company is the next step.”

The payoff is self-evident: Naples opera lovers would finally have their own company, nurtured and supported from the ground up by their own investment, ultimately, Pearce says, in their city.

End of story.

But it’s not as easy as it sounds. Starting a company requires careful financial planning and a level of quality capable of convincing sophisticated patrons and ticket buyers alike that their money is going to be well spent.

And opera is not cheap. Even in the cultural hinterlands beyond New York City or Chicago, the price tag can be steep: the Sarasota Opera floats a $6.5 million annual budget and Florida Grand Opera, which next season becomes a resident company in Miami’s new $446 million-dollar performing arts center, is looking at $18 million for its 2006-07 season.

“There’s no doubt that to start an opera company requires a critical mass of support before opening night,” says Mark Scorca, president of Opera America, a service organization for 114 members. “It’s hard to just wade into producing an opera because the point of entry is already expensive.”

Pearce is even plainer. “It’s a cart-before-the-horse thing,” she says wearily. “We couldn’t sell tickets to ‘Tosca’ and then decide whether we should do it or not. We just had to do it.”

So, on Sunday, Opera Naples presents Puccini’s grand tragedy with a mixed bag of resources — with professional lead singers, a professional conductor, music director and stage director, more than 50 volunteers, homegrown sets, costumes rented from the Lyric Opera of Chicago and a $100,000 budget, of which about a third is accounted for.

And at press time, not quite half of the 1,200 seats in the Gulf Shore High School auditorium had been sold.

Filling the house is important, Pearce says, not just because it will help fill in the bottomline, but because the patrons (Read: potential donors) who fill the seats are seeing Opera Naples’ best advertisement for what they can do, a kind of musical (ital)amuse bouche (end ital) for an seven-course season planned to include three productions, some more professional staffing and a $2 million dollar budget.

By the time the curtain comes down, Pearce says, “we should have proven our worth to the community, enough that they should step up and get behind it.”

Can it work? It depends on who you ask and how they define success.

“What is success?” Pearce asks. “A full house. That’s the only thing.”

That Catch-22

Known locally as a talented soprano with more than 20 years of performing experience, Pearce left touring behind six years ago to have a life and to open her own teaching studio in Naples.

Her own performances here, as well as the work of her students, she says, started people talking about the viability of creating the town’s first professional opera company. They hinted to her that perhaps she should take the lead.

Pearce started taking the idea seriously in June. She put together a small team of opera professionals drawn to Naples for retirement or the slow-slow of living out of the spotlight. Their first project: A New Year’s Eve recital-ball designed to pitch the possibilities of a company to 500 of the right people, the kind who are in a position to financially support the creation of such a company.

She brought in Jeffrey Springer, a powerful tenor, and mezzo-soprano Buffy Baggot — both players on the touring and guest appearance scene — to play in a school gymnasium elaborately decorated to evoke a Viennese Palace.

Only half of the $250 tickets sold for the event.

“We broke even,” Pearce says of the $90,000 event. About a quarter was funded before that night. “With the kind of extravagance to decorate and to hire the right performers, it turned out that it wasn’t much of a fundraiser. But it was a great, splashy entrance on the cultural scene.”

And splashy is important, she goes on. “There was a bit of discussion about doing one of those church basement cute little things with the piano until we got people interested, or just go out there and do what we know how to do to the best of our ability and therefore get the respect of people who can help the opera company.”

And that’s one of the puzzling Catch-22s of such a project, says Opera America’s Scorca.

“It is possible in other art forms to have a satisfying community effort. For example, a two- or four-person play in a neighborhood church can be credible evening of theater. It’s possible for orchestra of very well-rehearsed amateurs to be very satisfying. ... But the challenge here is that many residents are sophisticated followers of opera companies in other cities. They’ve come to expect a certain level of production. To start at that level is very challenging.”

Putting on a great show

Even as they were planning the New Year’s Eve ball, talks were underway for the company’s first production. Puccini’s “Tosca,” which has consistently appeared in the Top 10 most performed works in the U.S., came up immediately.

The work’s familiarity, the reasoning went, could be reassuring to ticket buyers who don’t know the untried company’s potential. And Pearce, a local name who had sung the role many times, could sing it again here.

Several problems emerged.

The best theaters are booked. The Philharmonic and the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall in Fort Myers are typically booked well in advance. Plus, with the stream of touring productions, there’s little time or inclination to hand over the theater for 10 days Opera Naples wanted for preparation and production.

The solution? Settle into a high school theater, which is more likely to give the company the time and price they can afford. Gulf Coast High School’s theater is less than 10 years old, Pearce points out — with a separate sound booth and an opera-wide proscenium stage. “It’s state of the art.”

But a high school theater? Doesn’t that take some of the shine off the event, which is essentially a come-on for funding season 2006-07?

“If you were a donor and you are living in Naples or Bonita Bay and you’re used to coming here,” says Myra Janco Daniels, founder and CEO of the Philharmonic Center for the Arts, “if you have regular seats here and you donate — not necessarily just to opera — why would you want to go to a high school?

“I think people are used to coming to the Phil. I think they know the quality of the sound here. They know the quality of the seats. They know the lighting is professionally done.”

Perhaps, but a great company can be born anywhere, says Mark Scorca, who is executive director of Opera America. Glimmerglass Opera held its first season in a school auditorium in Cooperstown, Ohio, in 1975. Over the year, it has garnered an international reputation, presenting 43 performances of four new productions its own theater every season.

Pearce thinks there’s room for both the Phil and Opera Naples.

“It’s a wonderful asset to the community and always will be,” she says of the 17-year-old performing arts center. “There’s a difference between a touring company coming in and what they’re able to do out of a truck with a production, and what a local company can do in the local community. There’s a different feel to it, too, in the community.”

The orchestra is spoken for. A non-compete clause prevents the Naples Philharmonic Orchestra, led by music director Jorge Mester, from playing as a group for any other presenting organization. Members can play with another orchestra, but only after the season is over.

“It was a real problem,” says Ron Bowman, president of the Naples Opera Society and a consultant on the project. “A real problem.”

But Pearce navigated around the non-compete clause with local players and transplants (some with vaunted reputations) who just happen to have retired here. Among them is Raymond Gniewek, former concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

Ultimately, Naples is their trump card.

So far, Pearce has been able to draw professionals like tenor Jeffrey Springer as well as Ronald Doiron as music director and Cal Stewart Kellogg as conductor of “Tosca.”

“We realized that we’re in a unique position fairly early on: We’re in Naples, Florida, and they’re in places like Chicago, Detroit, and maybe they’re 50 years old and thinking, where do I want to be in 10 or 15 years?”

And for some, like the local chorus and singers, working with Opera Naples is quite an coup.

For Leslie Halla, who is an assistant director at the Lyric Opera of Chicago as well as the Santa Fe Opera’s acclaimed summer festival, her appearance as stage director is an important step in the competitive and male-dominated world of opera direction.

“Usually you start at a lower level company to get the chops going. It’s better to do it in a place where they’re is not quite so much pressure,” she says. “It’s kind of refreshing, too, because not everyone is doing it because it’s their job. They’re doing it because they love it, they’re learning and they want to put on a great show.”

Can it work?

Success for a new opera company — perhaps any kind of performing arts company — comes down to a straightforward formula. Strong leadership is essential. So is responsible money management and avid fundraising.

But in the end, it comes down to two questions: Can you fill the theater by at least the third required most companies consider necessary? Do you have patrons — from individuals to foundations to what these days is the rare corporate or federal donor — willing to not only fill out the budget but provide for the growth that will create new audiences?

Susan Danis, executive director of Sarasota Opera, believes the answer to both those questions will be yes.

“We’re very fortunate in Florida that there’s obviously an older demographic,” says Danis, who has seen her company’s budget nearly double in her six years there. “No matter what way you want to cut it, most people come to like and enjoy opera a little later in life.

“We are certainly, in both cities, where there are people that have chosen to make Florida their retirement. We’re most fortunate to have very successful men and woman who still have a strong belief in guiding the community that they can be proud of and enjoy. They’re kind enough to build and support the kind of organization that they support and believe in.”

Opera has had a presence on the Phil’s schedule for the last 15 years, Daniels says. Last season saw the Czech Opera Prague, Teatro Lirico D’Europa and the Mozart Festival Opera.

“We sell out,” she says.

Upcoming seasons will see bigger opera stars, she says, as well as better quality touring companies. They’re also working on arranging to use the Phil’s orchestra with some productions. They are also considering running more than one night.

“The problem is that it all sounds good on paper,” Daniels says. “You can’t go into this business if you don’t know what you’re doing. The management of an opera company is very serious and I have seen a lot go under.

“First, you have to have the right facility. Probably even before that, you have to have the money. It is not small change.”

And with Sarasota Opera, Florida Grand Opera, the Phil and other arts organizations looking for funding, possibly from the same sources, can Opera Naples really compete?

Pearce shrugs. Like Danis and others in the industry, she doesn’t think there will be much crossover. She’s betting that corporate donors will be her main source of income. And after the New Year’s Eve ball, she has some interest.

“Of course,” she says, “we all know that certain individuals in this town could pretty much fund the whole thing.”

(In fact, the Naples-based Vincent A. Stabile Foundation helped secure the 2004-05 broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera with a hefty $3.5 million donation.)

But Pearce also admits she’s no fundraiser. That’s why they’ve engaged Chick Heithaus, a 30-year veteran of opera boards who is taking over what the industry euphemistically calls development. Heithaus is married to Harriet Heithaus, a writer and editor at the Naples Daily News.

“I’m an artist,” Pearce says. “That side of the brain is not really developed with the spreadsheets and all that.”

She knows enough, though, to realize that “Tosca” is important to their bottomline. And even if they pay for the production with ticket sales and newly generated donations, there’s still another season in the works. They plan to produce the family friendly “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” the New Year’s Eve ball and Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Mikado.” That, she estimates, will require a $2 million dollar budget.

“There’s been a lot of wait-and-see, but I guess that’s true of all cities,” she says quietly. “We have founding patrons who are going to make sure that we don’t crash.”

In the end, perhaps it’s all about the words on the “Tosca” poster. Love. Honor. Sacrifice. “I’m doing what I’m set to do,” says Pearce, who wakes up many nights with strings of what ifs, what ifs to quell. “These things are going to fall into place.

“I just believe that if you’re doing the right thing, things will come your way. That’s where I get my strength,” she says, “because this is scary.”

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The Top 10

The most produced operas among Opera America members in the 2004-05 season, the most recent year available.

1. “Madama Buttefly,” Puccini (21 times)

2. “Don Giovanni,” Mozart (14)

3. “La Bohéme,” Puccini (13)

4. “Carmen,” Bizet (13)

5. “The Marriage of Figaro,” Mozart (12)

6. “Tosca,” Puccini (12)

7. “Rigoletto,” Verdi (10)

8. “Aida,” Verdi (9)

9. “The Mikado,” Sullivan (9)

10. “La Traviata,” Verdi (9)

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The story of ‘Tosca’

(Composed in 1896-99; Premiered Jan. 14, 1900)

Act I

Rome, June 1800.

Angelotti, an escaped political prisioner, approaches his old friend and sympathizer Cavaradossi, who is working on a painting of Mary Magdelene in a church. Cavarodossi agrees to help him, but is interrupted in the planning by Tosca, the painter’s lover. She notices that the model for Mary is the Marchesa Attavanti and becomes jealous. Before leaving to hide the dissident in his villa, Cavarodossi convinces Tosca of his love in a long duet. After they leave, police chief Scarpia orders a search of the chapel and when Tosca returns, he tells her the painter has run away with her rival. Furious, Tosca leaves for his villa with Scarpia’s men not far behind.

Act II

Cavarodossi is imprisonedin Scarpia’s castle. As he is tortured, Tosca is questions by Scarpia. She breaks, revealing Angelotti’s hiding place. After Cavarodossi is removed, Tosca agrees to give herself to Scarpia if he will let the lovers escape. He agrees, explaining that to save face Cavarodossi must face a mock execution. He signs their safe-conduct pass. She stabs him.

Act III

As Cavarodossi waits for his fate, Tosca assures him that the soldiers are actually using blanks, and she shows him the pass. The firing squad does its job, however, and Cavarodossi dies. Soldiers discover Scarpia’s body, and chase Tosca toward the ramparts. She throws herself from the castle walls.

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If you go

What: “Tosca” (Sung in Italian with English surtitles)

When: 7 p.m. Sunday

Where: Gulf Coast High School Auditorium, 7878 Shark Way

Cost: $75 orchestra; $50 general

Information: (877) 908-1083, www.operanaples.com or at the door