The Florentine Opera Company gathered together its fine young quartet of summer residency vocalists plus spirited pianist Ruben Piirainen for a delightful concert titled “Broadway and the Great American Songbook” last Friday and Saturday evening at the Florentine Opera Center in Riverwest. This informal recital was well attended (on Friday) and proved to be a crowd-pleaser.
Interestingly enough, the program was most notable for what it didn’t contain given the subject matter as opposed to what it did. Yes, there were some Broadway-American musical classics featured, but the more obscure outnumbered the familiar. This is always somewhat of a risk, of course. It also moved into much more contemporary ground—especially in the concert’s second half. Again, risky. I was, indeed, somewhat disappointed not to see some of what I had hoped for on the program, but even so, admittedly, it was enjoyable to hear some pieces I’d never heard before.
The 2018 Summer Residency Quartet consists of soprano Nicole Heinen, mezzo-soprano Briana Moynihan, tenor Nicholas Huff and baritone Stephen Hobe. Together or separately, they not only sang but semi-staged such standards as “On the Street Where You Live” (My Fair Lady), “Body and Soul,” “Get Happy” and the bravura “Soliloquy” from Carousel. Treading less familiar turf, they also performed songs from Hunchback of Notre Dame, Shenandoah, Ghost, Into the Woods and Songs for a New World. Pieces on the program spanned nearly a century. Sans quibbles with intonation, some incohesive moments in ensemble numbers and, perhaps, an occasional voice-crack, all was rendered well and entertainingly enough for a mid-summer’s eve.
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The performances took place in the Florentine Opera Center’s repurposed performance space in a former factory on East Burleigh Street. The backdrop consisted of an open garage door with plants, trees and a setting sun. Several passersby strode into the background to enjoy the free music; a couple took to a spontaneous dance in a joyful moment in Moynihan and Huff’s duet, “The Girl I Love,” by the Gershwin brothers. That song is from 1924; the dancing couple were millennials. Such is the timelessness of great and moving music.
