KSO, UK Triumphant Team in Concert "Boheme"

They were all crying as tenor Stuart Neill broke the leaden silence with his heart-rending "Mimi" Sunday afternoon at Singletary Center in Lexington.
   It was the end of Puccini's "La Boheme," a concert performance by the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra and University of Kentucky Opera Theater led by KSO music director James R. Cassidy.
   The crowd rose as a body and cheered long and helplessly.  Cast members, including Neill as the poet Rodolfo and soprano Sandra Lopez as his consumptive lover, Mimi, brushed tears from their eyes as they left the stage, as did Cassidy.
   The KSO-UKOT's "La Boheme," a repeat of Friday's opener in Greaves Hall at Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, packed an emotive punch as powerful as a hoops victory in this basketball-loving town.
   Neill and Lopez, Metropolitan Opera singers with soaring Puccini voices, made this deathless opera about young love in 19th-century Paris real without sets, costumes or staging.
   The two demonstrated strong chemistry from the outset.  Neill's Che gelida manina stopped the show in the first act.  A tenor of power and nuance, he could feather a tone as easily as he could belt it, and he pumped romance into his  characterization of the smitten Rodolfo.
   Lopez was a vulnerable, kittenish Mimi, from her opening Mi chiamano Mimi to her heartfelt Addio in act three.  Their final duet didn't need bed linens, candlelight or a frosted windowpane.  They sang in each other's arms, Lopez' head nestling on Neill's chest, her arm going limp as Mimi dies.
   It was a triumph for all concerned, including Jeffrey Buchman, a 1997 Luciano Pavarotti Competition winner, who displayed a stirring baritone as Marcello, the painter in love with the flirtatious Musetta.  He, Lopez and Neill were joined by an exceptionally talented group of UKOT students, soprano Darla Diltz (Musetta), baritone David Baker (Schaunard), basses Bradley Williard (Colline) and Jacob Cook (Benoit) and tenor Mark Kano (Parpignol).
   Diltz made a golden-voiced, vivacious Musetta.  She and Buchman sparred convincingly, serving as a perfect foil for the "serious" Rodolfo and Mimi.
   Baker's baritone had a trumpet-like beauty as the musician Schaunard.  Williard's dark, reedy bass offered a fitting contrast as the philosopher Colline.
   Bass David Bender, a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, was a spry, witty Alcindoro, Musetta's duped, elderly escort in act two.
   The KSO Chorale, Northern Kentucky Children's Ensemble and members of the Boone County High School Band filled the Christmas Eve scene outside the Cafe Momus with festivity and color.
   Bringing it all together was Cassidy, who led with clarity and exceptional rapport with the singers.  The 68-strong KSO sounded lush and vivid in Singletary's bright acoustics.
   This is the second collaboration between the KSO and UKOT (they did a concert performance of Verdi's Otello" in 2004).  One hopes it will not be the last, as it brings trogether two of Kentucky's finest musical organizations.
(first published in The Cincinnati Post January 15, 2007)