by Bob Curtwright

Is "The Light in the Piazza" opera for the Broadway crowd or Broadway for the opera set? Well, it's sort of both, says Wayne Bryan, guest director for the lushly romantic tale about the meeting of a naive American tourist and a lovestruck Italian boy in Florence, Italy, during one summer in the post-war 1950s.

"When it opened in 2005, it was nominated for 11 Tony Awards and won six, officially making it a Broadway show. But it's a musical play that requires top-quality voices that reflect sufficient opera training. There's also a lot of Italian language, both in speech and song. It's like traditional Italian opera with American storytelling," Bryan says.

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