FLORENCE, ITALY – Stefania Sandrelli says her debut as opera director, a production of Tosca at this year’s Piccini Opera Festival, presents the heroine as a symbol of the fight against gender violence. The 75-year-old screen legend’s first opera production debuts in Viareggio, her hometown, on Friday in kicking off the 67th edition of the Puccini Festival at Torre del Lago near Lucca.
“Violence against women is no longer tolerable,” said Stefani Sandrelli, who won a lifetime achievement award from the Venice Film Festival in 2005. “Toscar is a brave, strong woman, who feels disquiet for the things that she feels aren’t right, she is an absolutely contemporary character”.
The actress, whose films include Seduced and Abandoned (1963), The Conformist (1970) , 1900 (1976) and The Key (1983), said she was thrilled to make her directorial debut. “It is an overwhelming emotion for me. My grandad used to sing to me all Puccini’s arias and this debut touches me very much, it is a dream”.
The Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago is the only Festival in the world fully dedicated to the composer Giacomo Puccini. It takes place every summer during the months of July and August, in the very places that inspired Maestro Puccini’s immortal melodies. The Festival saw its first light in 1930 and over the years has become an increasingly prestigious event which each year attracts tens of thousands of spectators from all over the world.
Puccini composed in Torre del Lago his main operas, among which Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904), La Fanciulla del West (1910), La Rondine (1917) and Il Trittico (1918).
At the Puccini Festival, everyone can appreciate the great stars of opera, under the direction of some of the most important conductors, and admire the extraordinary stagings executed by famous directors of Puccini’s operas such as Madama Butterfly, Turandot, La Bohème, Tosca, Manon Lescaut.
The Great Open Air Theatre with 3,400 seats, dedicated to Maestro Puccini, opens onto the picturesque Massaciuccoli Lake and is surrounded by a park of extraordinary charm that houses works of art by great contemporary sculptors such as Pietro Cascella, Jean-Michel Folon and Kan Yasuda, to name some. Just a few steps away is the house where the Maestero lived and composed most of his Masterpeaces.
Today, in the Villa-Mausoleum are preserved his remains and you can admire the glorious relics that in life surrounded and accompanied the artistic career of this great artist.