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Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival
Presented by the Redlands Community Music Association, Inc.
Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival presents Puccini’s “Tosca”
Conductor and producer Frank Fetta calls it “blood curdlingly exciting.” Bursting with drama and passion, Puccini’s “Tosca” comes to the Redlands Bowl stage on Friday, August 12 as the Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival continues.
“This is his greatest music,” Fetta said in a recent telephone interview. “It is so dramatic from the minute it starts. All the ideas and characters are represented by melodic lines.”
Set in politically-charged Rome in 1800, “Tosca” tells a simple story. According to Fetta, there’s nothing complicated about it: “Tosca loves Mario, Mario loves Tosca, Scarpia loves Tosca and hates Mario,” said Fetta.
Scarpia, considered by some critics to the most sinister of all of Puccini’s villains, also happens to be a particularly brutal and ruthless Chief of Police. With this power and a timely misstep by Mario, Scarpia’s evil plot unfolds.
Scarpia finds a way to arrest Mario for harboring an escaped political prisoner. When Tosca, a darkly beautiful and famous singer, learns of Mario’s imprisonment, she comes to Scarpia to plead for Mario’s release. True to his reputation, Scarpia has Mario tortured within earshot of Tosca, so she promises to give in to Scarpia’s lust for her. Just as Scarpia enfolds her in his arms, Tosca seizes a knife, and the opportunity, and kills him.
She goes to Mario to tell him of Scarpia’s promise to fake Mario’s execution. She tells him to fall when the guns are fired, and pretend to be dead. After the guards leave, she and Mario will steal away together. Of course, Scarpia’s promise was as empty as his heart was evil. When Mario does not arise, Tosca throws herself off the parapets. As Fetta said, “They are all losers in the end.”
Even for the opera-squeamish, “Tosca” will “hold you on the edge of your seat,” Fetta said. “It is unrelentingly sensuous and violent. We will provide a full libretto with the complete English translation of the opera, and besides, the story is simply not complex.”
The fully-staged opera, sung in Italian, will star soprano Shana Blake Hill, returning to the Bowl from last year’s production of “Il Pagliacci” and as Musetta in the 2003 Redlands Bowl production of “La Boheme.”
Matteo Bitteti, a former winner of the Redlands Bowl’s Young Artist Auditions and now a regular guest of the Los Angeles Opera, will sing the role of Mario Cavaradossi. Bitteti performed last summer as Canio in “Il Pagiliacci,” and he has sung with the New York City Opera, Stockholm Opera, Israel Opera, Mozarteum Vocal Institute in Salzburg, and Pennsylvania Opera.
Louis Lebherz, also a frequent guest artist of the Los Angeles Opera, will direct the production. Over the years, Lebherz has performed in concert and in operas at the Redlands Bowl, and he has performed in opera halls throughout the United States and Europe where he is the resident bass in Karlsruhe, Germany, and Bern, Switzerland.
Fetta will direct the San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra, and a 50-member chorus. The program, funded in part by a grant from the James Irvine Foundation, begins at 8:15 p.m.
Like all Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival performances, this event is free of charge, and a free-will offering will be collected at intermission.
The ushers will be representatives of the American Association of University Women, the First Congregational Church of Redlands, and Redlands Educational Partnership Foundation. The intermission speaker will be Jan Weder, vice president of the Redlands Community Music Association, Inc.
The Redlands Bowl is located on Eureka Street just south of Brookside Avenue in Redlands. For information and directions, call (909) 793-7316 or visit the Web site at www.redlandsbowl.org.
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