In recent years, there’s been a welcome expansion of the repertory performed by the Florentine Opera Company. But even with these forays into Baroque and contemporary opera, it’s nice to know the company is still able to deliver a rousing production of a bread-and-butter classic. They did to open this season (the company’s 80th) with La Traviata. And they did it again with this weekend’s smashing production of La Boheme.
It had all the ingredients of old-fashioned Grand Opera: lavish sets (rented from the Arizona Opera, but evocatively lit by Noele Stollmack), a solid (and large) chorus, and lead performers with both musical 
talent and star quality. In fact, Act One (I saw the Sunday afternoon performance) was a little too “Grand.” Singing Mimi and Rudolfo’s love-at-first-sight duets, Noah Stewart and Alyson Cambridge seemed a little stiff and stagey, an almost throwback to the “stand-and-deliver” style of opera that has given way to more dramatically sophisticated acting. Conductor Joseph Rescigno kept the tempos ponderously slow, and the leads seemed to be more interested in proving themselves with soaring notes rather than using the music to express their characters’ fervor. Stewart’s intonation was a little shaky on some of the soaring high notes, and the romantic chemistry just didn’t gel.
But eventually, the two stars settled in to their roles and their characters. By the third act, the most dramatically nuanced of Puccini’s four-act story, the pair were emotionally and musically convincing. The “double duet” (“Addio dolce svegliare”), which contrasts the pure but doomed love of the leads with the hot-tempered passions of Musetta (Katrina Thurman) and Marcello (Corey McKern), was exquisitely staged by William Florescu, and gorgeously sung.
Stewart and Cambridge were obviously the big tickets here, and rightly so. Stewart’s tenor has a clarion 
edge to it that reminded me of Pavarotti in his glory days, and once he settled into the role, his stage presence was charming and convincing. Cambridge’s sound is warm and un-strained, even at the limits of her range. And as a pair, their voices blend superbly.
The supporting roles were equally fine. McKern was musically and dramatically assured, as were his bohemian buddies Colline (Matthew Trevino) and Schaunard (Scott Johnson). Thurman soprano was pitch perfect if occasionally thin. And the Florentine chorus brought musical liveliness to the complicated café scene (Act II), even though the scene suffered from a wash of similar costumes (no costume designer was credited) that made it hard to distinguish the singers from the Paris crowds. And Rescigno’s work with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra was first rate.
It was a fine way to end the Florentine’s landmark 80th season.
