THE MAN BEHIND ‘MEMPHIS’: Dallas Summer Musicals opens the touring version of Memphis tonight at the Music Hall at Fair Park. The show won a best musical Tony in 2010 and tells the story of a 1950s radio DJ striving to change the face of popular music. Memphis features a book by Joe DiPietro, and if that name sounds familiar, then you’ve probably seen his long, long (long) running I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change at Theatre Three. “It has probably had 3,000 to 4,000 productions at this point,” DiPietro tells dallasnews.com in a preview of Memphis. “It didn’t let me buy a yacht, but I tell people I wish every young writer had an I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change to fall back on.”

TALKING ‘TOSCA’: This year’s Fort Worth Opera Festival is in full swing, with two classics and a pair of contemporary works. One of the classics is Puccini’s Tosca, which is receiving mostly positive reviews. “This particular production offers everything a lover of traditional opera could want,” Wayne Lee Gay writes in his Front Row review, giving special props to the sets and costumes. “Soprano Carter Scott is a powerful singer and a compelling actress in the title role, her rich voice reverberating through the hall and her handsome presence commanding the stage the way a diva should,” Martha Heimberg writes on theaterjones.com. The only negative review I could find comes from Olin Chism, who calls the show, “disappointingly inconsistent, with powerful dramatic scenes only partially compensating for vocal shortcomings,” in his dfw.com review. The next performance is Sunday.

QUOTABLE: “I believe things of great lasting beauty know their owners. I’ve always been grateful that there are two things that can never be destroyed: great beauty and great memories. I may be parting with things, but I still see them forever in my home as they are.”

– Van Cliburn, ahead of an auction of furniture and silver pieces in his collection, in an interview with startelegram.com.