From the OC Register on August 25th
DANA POINT The city has taken another step toward making an Italian opera festival in town next summer a reality.
The City Council on Monday unanimously approved the formation of a sister city committee and setting up a non-profit to support sister city activities, including a potential festival.
City staff will advertise and pick people interested to serve on the committee, forming the group in the next two to three months, said Christie Teague, the city’s economic development manager, who likely will serve as a liaison to the committee.
The council also picked Mayor Lisa Bartlett and Councilman Scott Schoeffel to serve as ex-officio representatives to the new committee.
“A big part of the focus will be to support festival activities and support relationships between the two cities,” Teague said. “This is all new for Dana Point.”
The size of the new committee will be determined by community interest.
Dana Point and Viterbo, an Italian city of 70,000 about 70 miles north of Rome, became sister cities on May 31, according to a city report.
Backers believe that the official handshake should help speed the return of opera to Orange County in 2010 along with cultural tourism. The Santa Ana-based Opera Pacific, the county’s only opera company, shut down shop for good in November after 22-plus seasons.
The sister city agreement, believed to be the second for an Orange County city with an Italian counterpart, helped set the stage for a potential three-week Italian opera festival in August and September of 2010 at Dana Point’s Lantern Bay Park, adjacent to the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa.
Teague said some members of the new committee will be on the non-profit entity that will help raise funds for sister city activities. The panel will also work on establishing communications protocol and contacts between Dana Point and Viterbo.
Several residents who want to include Viterbo in their travel plans to Italy have called the city asking what they should do when they get there, Teague said.
Dana Point has identified the visitor center in Viterbo and will work towards arrangements to greet and share materials about that city with locals who travel there. City officials will reciprocate the services for Italian visitors coming to Dana Point.
In March, council members directed staff to investigate the cost and feasibility of hosting Orange County’s first-ever opera festival, as well as to look into creating the coastal city’s first sister-city partnership. The city was approached by the newly-created Italian American Opera Foundation as it searched for a festival venue.
The council is expected to consider a sponsorship agreement with the foundation for the potential festival at a future date.
Italian conductor Stefano Vignati wants to reproduce a form of Viterbo’s popular Tuscia Operafestival in Dana Point, said Barbara Manconi, the spokeswoman for the foundation, in an earlier interview.
Details of the festival still have to be hammered out, but Manconi said then that part of the event will be recreating an Italian village at Lantern Bay Park.
