A young American woman and her mother are visiting Florence when a wayward breeze leads to a chance encounter with a young Italian man and love at first sight. Naturally  enough, the mother, Margaret, steers her daughter Clara away from this stranger, but Fabrizio follows them to their next stop at an art gallery.

The opening scenes of The Light in the Piazza read almost like a modern day rom-com, but there's a twist that made this Tony Award winning musical set in the 1950s stand out. Clara is developmentally delayed thanks to an accident when she was a child. Her parents have never considered the possibility that she would marry.

Opera in the Height is presenting this production in three performances starting this Friday night. Although labeled a musical, The Light in the Piazza is  also known for breaking with the usual pop music traditions when it opened on Broadway in 2005 because of its score, filled with elements of classical music and opera. As a result, opera companies across the United States have performed it.

Artistic and General Director Eiki Isomura said the musical has consistently been an audience favorite because  "I think it comes down to how utterly gorgeous the music is and also I think the way the setting transports the audience to Florence and then Rome," he said..

"It has a way of dropping the audience right into the middle of Florence with this libretto that has both English and Italian dialog. Sometimes the Italian dialog is purposefully presented without translation to put the audience in the perspective of the American tourist. But I think people keep coming back to it especially opera professionals because the music is just so gorgeous."

Seamus Ricci, stage director for this production, has directed The Light in the Piazza before — in 2020 right before the pandemic at Carnegie Mellon in the School of Music. Saying they did "quite a bit of research," for that production, he said "it's nice to revisit it and pick up on some elements we missed the first time."

"There is a societal pushback in the show. In the societal hierarchy Margaret is kind of following the rules of her husband and what is expected and also the care of Clara. But I think what we find is there's very much a want to let things happen naturally and not put too much protection around Clara," Ricci said.

"While people all of her life have said Clara won't develop, Clara actually is quite developed and just bc of the protective nature of her parents, she hasn't been exposed to certain things, but when she is, she has very heightened emotions about everything," Ricci explained. "There's always this buildup to 'what's wrong with Clara,' and when that is finally explained, we find out we make a big deal out of very simple things. And the simple thing is that Clara and Fabrizio love each other."

In regards to the score, Isomura said:

"The score itself written by [Adam] Guettel who by the way is the grandson of Richard Rodgers of Rodgers & Hammerstein, an absolute brilliant composer who created this  score that is a blend of popular and operatic styles. It calls for classically trained voices. There's a role for example, Franca who is the sister-in-law of the male romantic lead Fabrizio, who has to sing the F above high C which is Queen of the Night territory. So we're fortunate to have cast Lisa Borik Vickers who sang Queen of the Night for us at Opera in the Heights a few years ago" It won the Tony award for Best Score, in fact.

Isomura said her was wanted to do this show for several years "because it's a piece that opera singers talk about as a piece of musical theater that is exciting to them.

"I was looking for truly complete performers who have all of the so-called legit vocal chops that have allowed them to thrive in the operatic field but also who have the theatrical chops to deliver dialog in this case sometimes in two languages. It's  a cast that is  a mix of out of town artists nd local artists who either specialize in this sort of thing or who I’ve gotten to know over a a course of a number of years to be the kind of complete performers that the piece demands."

"It has these musical demands that are highly sophisticated and more what you would expect from the classical and operatic realms," Isomura said. Besides Vickers, the cast includes Christina Pezzarossi as Margaret, Catherine Goode as Clara, Benjamin Lurye as Fabrizio, Scott Clark as Giuseppe, Alejandro Magallón as Signor Naccarelli, Megan Berti as Signora Naccarelli and Brad Goertz as Roy Johnson. Stephen W. Jones is conducting.

What Opera in the Heights will be presenting in its two-and-a-half hour version is a distillation that Guettel himself did for a chamber version. "What that means is each player has more notes to play. Every player is heavily involved in every moment. I think it will be a fun one to play," Isomura said. .

"It's also very well suited for Opera in the Heights because we so pride ourselves on our intimate performance space to have the small scoring such that we we can present this piece without microphones. Broadway musicals typically, they mic everything. But in our 280-seat theater it doesn’t always make sense to do that. We want to hear everyone's live voice naturally. So it's nice to have an opportunity to present this in this distilled form and to present it completely acoustically,"

As Riccci sees it: "The simple truth is this is a really beautiful love story. And how these two young people find their way to each other despite how their families react initially.  There’s this really great symbolism because they don’t speak the same language. Love crosses barriers. Not only do they grow closer but they grow up."

Performances are scheduled for February 16-18 at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Lambert Hall, 1703 Heights Boulevard. Sung in English and Italian with English surtitles. For more information, call 713-861-5303 or visit operaintheheights.org. $29-$85.