The Florentine’s romantic for tenor Matt Richardson

Matthew Richardson will not only sing this weekend (Feb. 10-12), but will take over as master of ceremonies from general director William Florescu at the Florentine Opera’s Isn’t It Romantic? at Marcus Center Vogel Hall.

Tenor Richardson will join fellow Florentine Studio Artists Erica Schuller, soprano; Kristen DiNinno, mezzo soprano; and Dan Richardson (no relation), bass-baritone, in a Valentine revue of love songs from Viennese operetta and Broadway. Eileen Huston will play the piano. Florescu will MC the Friday night concert and the Saturday matinee, but then will fly off to the Grammy Awards — the Florentine’s recording of Elmer Gantry has three nominations. Matthew Richardson will MC the last two Romantic shows.

Richardson is in his second year as a Studio Artist, as is Schuller. This program helps develop young singers, but Florescu has promoted them to an unusual degree. In a business in which principal singers and even the principal conductor fly in to Milwaukee, rehearse, perform and fly out, the Studio Artists have sustained tenures and can be the public face of the company.

For the second straight year, they have sung the solo roles in the Milwaukee Symphony’s Messiah runs. They do a 10-week run of school shows, which puts them before about 13,000 children. They sing recitals around town and they take on secondary roles in main stage productions.

Richardson, for example, played Pong in the recent Turandot at Uihlein Hall. That’s a step up from his one-line Ice Cream Vendor in Elmer Gantry.

“Without my Ice Cream Vendor, we never would have gotten that Grammy nomination,” Richardson joked, in an interview Thursday. “The conductor gave me one instruction: ‘Can you make that more like a shout?'”

Richardson, 27, connected with the Florentine when his teacher, Connie Haas, sent him to Florescu for coaching. Richardson’s first contract was as a chorister. He auditioned for the Studio Artist slot for 2010-11 and was asked back this season.

Richardson had studied with Haas while she was teaching at the Eastman School of Music, from which he graduated in 2007. Misgivings about a music career prompted him to sign up with AmeriCorps, a federal program aimed at alleviating poverty in the U.S.

“I taught at an elementary school in a fishing village in Alaska,” he said. “After a year doing that, I realized that I really did want to sing for a living.”

He returned to Dubuque, Ia., where his family lived. Not many opportunities there in his line of work. He knew that Haas had come home to Milwaukee, and he got in touch. He moved to here and found it possible to cobble together a living. In addition to singing — in Brigadoon at Music by the Lake, for example — he taught ballroom dance.

“I was a dancer before I was a singer,” he said. “So I could do that.”

The dance job yielded an extra dividend: He’s engaged to a woman he met in the studio. She is a Coast Guard officer and will soon move to Seattle, also Richardson’s destination at season’s end.

His Milwaukee experience will have established a career path. Richardson has made a lot of connections and learned a lot, about the business of an opera career as well as about acting and singing.

“Milwaukee turned out to be a great fit for me,” he said. “There are so many things you just can’t learn until you get out in front of people.This was really my first real job. Before, I was more of a musical theater singer, and I’d done some summer stock. It was fun singing and dancing, but something about opera is more fulfilling. It just feels good.”

Florescu trusted Richardson co-writing the script for this weekend’s show. Richardson then ran it by his singing colleagues.

“We all speak at some point,” he said. “I wrote a lot of it, but everyone contributed. There’s something disarming about singers being people, rather than characters. The whole point is to have a pleasant evening with the audience.”

Isn’t It Romantic? isn’t the last we’ll hear from Matt Richardson. He is slated to sing in Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah (March 16 and 18) and Mozart’s Idomeneo (May 18 and 20).

Isn’t It Romantic? runs Feb. 10 to 12, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $22 to $42 at the online box office and at (414) 291-5700.

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