Beautiful, intelligent, warm-hearted, charming, brought up in poverty, perhaps too rigorously sheltered, Magda is now blessed with all the so-called good things of life, but at a steep price. Having chosen one of the very few options available to a woman of her class, she has sold herself, as it were, to Rambaldo, a rich banker, to whom she owes her present luxury. Yet she continues to yearn for a more fulfilling life, the happiness that might have been had she followed the dictates of her heart.
She is haunted by a brief episode from a few years back, when, in a mood of reckless adventure, she escaped from the eagle eye of her stern, straight-laced old Auntie, and took off by herself to a wildly romantic place in Paris called Bullier. What she found there far exceeded her expectations: as if by magic, she encounters the young man she has long dreamed of. The attraction is mutual. But frightened perhaps by the perils and uncertainties of love, she flees, back to the confining life that she was so eager to break away from. Yet the memory has remained -- the memory and the regret. What if?
Amazingly, she is now given a second chance, an occasion to relive that extraordinary night from the past.
Lo! Lightning strikes twice. Love blossoms again. To Puccini's sumptuous music, though in a somewhat lighter vein than usual,
the story repeats itself, but this time with a different ending. Or so it would seem.
Pocket Opera | 469 Bryant Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 | 415-972-8930
