Puccini’s Tosca, a grand opera production with professional orchestra and chorus, is scheduled for April 26, 2022, at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall in Fort Myers.
Gulfshore Opera returns to Barbara B. Mann after their successful debut of La Bohème in January, the first full production at the venue since the COVID-19. The three-act opera will be performed in Italian with English supertitles, lush costumes, and original sets. It opens on April 24, 2022, at the Charlotte Performing Arts Center in Punta Gorda.
Tosca is a political thriller set in Rome in June 1800, during the Napoleonic wars and a time of great political unrest. Listed as #5 of the top ten best operas of all time, Tosca is a lethal opera where both the good and the bad guys all perish by the end. The action takes place in less than 24 hours, making it an intense experience!
At its core, Tosca is tale of romance over politics, featuring a heroic painter, Cavaradossi, a despicable police chief, Scarpia and an opera superstar, Tosca herself! Featured in this opera are two of the most famous powerful arias ever written, “Vissi d’arte” and “E lucevan le stelle.”
Gulfshore Opera will mount a fun new concept of “The Bat’s Revenge” or Die Fledermaus, moving the action to a time period modern audiences can relate to; the Golden Age of Hollywood. This delightful production, sung in English, will tour Charlotte, Lee and Collier counties mid-February next year.
With a new setting and libretto for Die Fledermaus, director and librettist Josh Shaw hopes to make a little more sense of things with the use of movie magic. It’s not so hard to believe that an actress would have access to her Hungarian Princess costume from a recent picture, that her maid is an aspiring chorus girl, that a mysterious Russian playboy has come to town to throw around some money, or that a matinee idol has a panache for the ladies and is in a little hot water with the local police.
Tickets go on sale this summer. For more information, go to www.gulfshoreopera.org or call us at 239-529-3925.
