If you learn one thing from the documentary Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story, it’s that the title character was a poster boy for patriotism. The movie tells you this so many times, in fact, that you can probably enter it for a five-minute portion and walk away with this theme.

The eldest brother of Israel’s current prime minister and a top 20 finalist in a 2005 poll of the greatest Israelis of all time, Netanyahu was a model soldier who died tragically in Operation Entebbe, the 1976 hostage-rescue mission carried out by his country’s secret defense unit. I’m not spoiling anything here; the film reveals as much in the prologue.

Using stock footage and English-language interviews with his friends, colleagues and family (yes, including Bibi), the movie reconstructs Yoni’s life story in a manner that is as predictable as a sunset, making the staid formulae of public-television documentaries appear radical by comparison. A long 84 minutes, Follow Me is repetitive, sentimental and hagiographic -- the cinematic equivalent of an authorized biography, bleached of controversy and swelling with one-note admiration for its subject.

Just to be clear on this, I’m not criticizing Yoni, or his brother, or Israel. The film makes an abundantly clear case for Yoni’s inclusion in the history books and the hearts and minds of millions. His military fortitude is unquestionably inspiring: He was an academic who eschewed a plum life as a Harvard student to fight for his homeland, sacrificing any and all romantic relationships for his country.

As the film’s many audio excerpts from his letters testify, he was immersed in war while maintaining a strikingly poetic distance from it (“War is hanging over my head like a swollen balloon,” was one literate example). Chances are, average Israelis will embrace this film with a nationalistic fervor, and probably choke back tears through a number of scenes.

Which is all fine. But let’s not kid ourselves into pretending that Follow Me is anything more than an educational video for an Israeli museum or a Jewish day school, like the artistically undistinguished documentaries on Martin Luther King Jr. that I saw in public school. As a piece of art, Follow Me is pretty hackneyed stuff.

The obtrusive, public-domain-quality guitar music coats every scene of Yoni’s childhood in saccharine aural coat, and none of it helps propel the film’s sloth-like pacing. What does perk some interest are the intervallic cutaways to news footage of the four days of existential terror leading up to the raid on Entebbe. But spreading them out amid Yoni’s biography only makes the man’s life story (fighting in the Six Days’ War and Yom Kippur War, like most Israelis of his generation) look saggy and ordinary by comparison.

Follow Me seems to overtly sidestep any inflammatory political statements -- not an easy accomplishment in a film whose climax is the Palestinian terrorist plot that martyred an Israeli hero. But the project still has a whiff of propaganda, the same whiff that permeated the pro-war dramas of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

If it were about an American military hero, it might end with a shirttail about where to enlist with the armed forces. It shows that even polite, middlebrow docs like this can have an agenda.

FOLLOW ME: THE YONI NETANYAHU STORY. Directors: Jonathan Gruber and Ari Daniel Pinchot; Distributor: International Film Circuit; Not rated. Opens Friday at Regal Shadowood 16, Living Room Theaters at FAU, Muvico Parisian 20, Cobb Downtown at the Gardens, Regal Delray 18, Movies of Delray, Cinema Paradiso and O Cinema.

HOLLYWOOD ― “It was a rough night,” Mike D’Amico sighed as he poked through the offstage drapes to deliver a couple of passes to waiting friends at Seminole Hard Rock.

No chance to explain, only to say before returning to his dressing room that he hoped to make it home to Lake Worth “sometime in September.”

But any reason is plausible, since D’Amico is adopted: He’s a member of perhaps the most dysfunctional family in show biz history, and therefore a key element of The Beach Boys 50, this time on bass.

The experience is hardly alien or alienating to D’Amico, who’s been involved with the Brian Wilson wing of the family for nearly 15 years. Previously he performed as a drummer.

But then D’Amico was made for these times. As a member of the Wondermints, a Los Angeles-based power-pop band, he can play just about any instrument. Some of the band’s music has a Beach Boys ring to it, so when Wilson hit the road in 1999, he took them along. Several more tours and recording sessions followed.

But just like the crowds come and go at any surf beach, so, too, has the Beach Boys lineup shifted over the decades. God only knows how many individuals have actually been “Beach Boys” while recording more top 40 hits (36) than any other American band.

In the beginning (1959) were the Wilson brothers ― high schoolers Brian, Carl and Dennis ― with cousin Mike Love as “Carl and the Passions.” Al Jardine came on board and The Pendletones were born in 1961, only to die when Candix Records changed the label on their first record, Surfin’, to The Beach Boys. On New Year’s Eve 1961, they played a Richie Valens memorial show, following Ike and Tina Turner. Two months later, Jardine quit, and two months after that, David Marks, then 13, signed on.

In 1963, Jardine returned and Marks left. Glen Campbell joined in 1964 and was replaced by Bruce Johnston in 1965. Other notables included Daryl “The Captain” Dragon and Toni Tennille, Carl’s brother-in-law Billy Hinsche (Dino, Desi and Billy), actor John Stamos and John Cowsill (of the Hair-y Cowsills).

Over the years, as Carl and Dennis died, Brian battled psychological and chemical demons, and members sued members, Jardine (fired from the band in ’98) and Love launched their own touring bands. Johnston hung around most of the time, and in 1997 Marks returned for a couple of years and was officially recognized as an original Beach Boy before leaving two years later to battle hepatitis C.

Twisting here, stretching there, The Beach Boys easily could have been the rubber band. That stint with Glen Campbell, for example, evolved from his session work with the band that actually played the instruments on some of the Beach Boys hit records.

Campbell, among others including Leon Russell, was part of The Wrecking Crew, a talented but unheralded group of studio musicians. They were mostly well-known for providing instrumental work for the likes of The Monkees, Carpenters, the early Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel, even Frank Sinatra and Elvis.

That telltale intro to Good Vibrations? The Wrecking Crew. The original Beach Boys could play, but The Wrecking Crew could play anything – rock, pop, jazz, rhythm and blues – and play it better.

Fast-forward half a century: Brian’s interview on CBS Sunday Morning the week before the group’s May 4 concert at the Hard Rock Live in Hollywood had viewers wondering if he was capable of playing anything. Definitely not the sharpest pin in the cushion, yet with a little help from his friends, he played piano and even plucked a few notes on a bass and tried a few steps with lead guitarist Jeff Foskett.

Meanwhile, D’Amico was on the back riser carrying out the serious bass line. The Wondermints were there, and elements of Love and Jardine’s splinter bands – a wacky family reunion of sorts. Just as The Wrecking Crew did in the ’60s, this bunch was there to bring that sound to life.

It’s all about the music, and what a celebration it was when they did get to South Florida, beginning with Jardine’s invitation to “get together and do it again.” The joint never stopped rocking. In remarkable harmony (even Brian),with rousing falsetto by Foskett, they romped in rough chronological sequence through surfing songs, high school angst and romance and hot rods. Love’s banter provided context, for example, explaining to the youngsters in the house the meaning of “flip side.”

Be True to Your School. Fans dressed as cheerleaders with pompoms dance in the center aisle. Wouldn’t It Be Nice? Everyone is on their feet, singing along and batting beach balls.

Tributes to the late brothers follow: a video screen shows clips of an eerily Lennonesque Dennis singing Forever and Carl offering the plaintive God Only Knows. Taking cue from his brothers, Brian sums up the evening with his new single, That’s Why God Made the Radio:

So tune right in, everywhere you go

He waved His hand, gave us rock ‘n’ roll

The soundtrack of falling in love

That's why God made the radio

Making this night a celebration

Spreading the love and sunshine

To a whole new generation

Whole new generation

After an exhaustive 40 songs, they left the stage, only to return with Bruce Johnston declaring, “It’s the weekend; we can stay later,” and close with Kokomo, Good Vibrations and Fun, Fun, Fun.

Back to reality. There’s no place “off the Florida Keys” called Kokomo, and Daddy didn’t take the T-Bird away: Ford quit making it. But even if Brian’s launch of Good Vibrations was a bit rough, the Beach Boys have proved they still can get around.

SET LIST (May 4, 2012)

1. Do It Again

2. Catch a Wave

3. Don’t Back Down

4. Surfin’ Safari

5. Surfer Girl

6. You’re So Good To Me

7. Wendy

8. Then I Kissed Her

9. The Little Girl I Once Knew

10. Why Do Fools Fall In Love

11. When I Grow Up To Be A Man

12. Cotton Fields

13. Be True To Your School

14. Disney Girls

15. Please Let Me Wonder

16. Don’t Worry Baby

17. Little Honda

18. Little Deuce Coupe

19. 409

20. Shut Down

21. I Get Around

22. California Dreaming

23. Sloop John B

24. Wouldn’t It Be Nice

25. This Whole World

26. Forever

27. Sail On Sailor

28. Heroes and Villains

29. In My Room

30. All This Is That

31. I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times

32. God Only Knows

33. That’s Why God Made The Radio

34. California Girls

35. All Summer Long

36. Help Me Rhonda

37. Rock and Roll Music

38. Do You Wanna Dance

39. Barbara Ann

40. Surfing U.S.A.

41. Kokomo

42. Good Vibrations

43. Fun, Fun, Fun

THE BEACH BOYS

Original Members:

Mike Love, lead vocals

Brian Wilson, vocals, keyboards, bass

Al Jardine, vocals, guitar

Dave Marks, vocals, guitar

Bruce Johnston, vocals, keyboards

Supporting musicians:

The Wondermints:

Mike D'Amico - bass, drums, vocals (2012)

Probyn Gregory - guitar, horns, bass, theremin, percussion, vocals (2012)

Darian Sahanaja - keyboards, mallets, vocals (2012)

Nick Walusko - guitar, vocals (2012)

Scott Bennett - keyboards, guitar, vocals (2012)

Nelson Bragg - percussion, vocals (2012)

John Cowsill - drums, vocals (1999-present)

Jeff Foskett - guitar, mandolin, percussion, vocals (1981-1991,2012)

John Stamos - percussion, guitar, vocals (1988-2012; select shows, not Hollywood)

Scott Totten – music director, guitar, vocals (2001-present)

Paul von Mertens - woodwinds (2012)

Not since A Clockwork Orange has Beethoven’s music been imbued with as much primal sexual urgency as in The Kreutzer Sonata (Zeitgeist, $19.93), a present-day transplant of a controversial 19^th-century novella by Tolstoy.

In the performance montage scenes of the titular sonata, the violin and piano play off each another like generous lovers. The players penetrate one another with their eyes, and the quickening violin strains crescendo toward an orgasmic climax before settling into a post-coital reticence.

Or at least that’s how Edgar (Danny Huston), the paranoid and probably psychopathic protagonist of The Kreutzer Sonata, sees it, and his paranoia becomes ours. The piano player is his wife Abigail (Elisabeth Röhm), and the violinist is a young Asian virtuoso named Aiden (Matthew Yang King). They have gotten together, at Edgar’s request, to perform the challenging sonata as a fundraiser for his charitable foundation.

Like Tom Cruise’s Dr. Harford in Eyes Wide Shut, it’s not long before Edgar’s mind becomes immersed in the lurid sexual fantasies he imagines Abigail enjoying with Aiden. With two time-consuming children to raise and a relationship fizzling under the labor of domesticity, Edgar grows increasingly insecure, voyeuristic and potentially violent. His response is extreme but his justification is plausible; wisely, screenwriters Lisa Enos and Bernard Rose keep open the possibility that his wife is being unfaithful, planting the nuggets of suspicion that metastasize inside Edgar like a cancer, eating away at his rationality.

Eschewing the moral puritanism that drove Tolstoy’s source material – amazingly, his Kreutzer Sonata was an argument in favor of sexual abstinence – director Rose offers a more realistic, sexually saturated environment. Erotic art and hotel pornography share screen time, and the carnal relations are inevitable and indeed desirable. Despite a few cross-cutting choices that distance the husband-and-wife sex scenes (a la Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now), the coitus in The Kreutzer Sonata is steamy in its matter-of-factness, refreshingly void of soft filters, dreamy incandescent light and the kind of abstract close-ups that obscure the naughty parts.

It’s all of a piece in a film that strives for, and almost always attains, a documentary naturalism. The movie is shot with spastic, handheld, faux-verité digital cameras, an approach that properly chafes against the immaculate elegance of Edgar’s palatial estate, puncturing his illusion of invincibility. Rose doesn’t reinvent any of the wheels of lo-fi indie filmmaking, but he rides atop them astoundingly well.

His dialogue, too, deserves praise for its naturalism; the final product has the air of an unscripted character workshop -- in a good way. Even the dreaded voice-over narration, delivered by Huston in a Shatnerian staccato, feels both writerly and extemporaneous, a wholly welcome addition.

The Kreutzer Sonata treats its adults with respect even when they’re behaving foolishly, and its sobering excoriation of the limits of male jealousy will stick in your craw like a spouse’s mysterious text message. I’m not sure if Tolstoy would approve, but Beethoven, were he not deaf and dead, would probably appreciate the movie’s approach to the old in-and-out.

DVD Watch

May 15: One of the most interesting omnibus films of the past quarter-century arrives on Blu-ray today in 1989’s New York Stories (Mill Creek Entertainment, $9.98). Three directors who have used the Big Apple as their cinematic playground -- Martin Scorsese, Frances Ford Coppola and Woody Allen -- offer three short films set in, and typifying, the city. The general consensus, and it’s a correct one, is that only Scorsese’s film, with Nick Nolte as an unctuous artist, transcends the concept as a great stand-alone picture, but New York Stories is an enjoyable experiment nonetheless. Look for a cameo by an unknown Larry David in Allen’s segment.

Mill Creek Entertainment is apparently starting to curb the market on budget Blu-ray discs; the distributor is also releasing Before and After ($9.98), Barbet Schroeder’s 1996 drama with Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson as the parents of a teenage boy who is accused of murdering his girlfriend. The DVD version of this title has been out of print for some time.

Intrepid art-house distributor Olive Films is releasing a new, three-disc edition of 1900 ($24.96 Blu-ray, $19.93 DVD), Bernardo Bertolucci’s gorgeous, sweeping portrait of 20^th-century Italy and its impact on two friends (Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu). The three-disc edition contains all 315 minutes of Bertolucci’s feature plus the 52-minute featurette Bernardo Bertolucci: Reflections on Cinema.

On the modern cult front this week, Criterion releases the best edition yet of Spike Jonze’s singularly innovative Being John Malkovich ($27.86 Blu-ray, $24.99 DVD). It includes the bonus features on the previous editions, plus newly recorded interviews with Jonze and Malkovich (in conversation with humorist John Hodgman) and a new behind-the-scenes documentary by filmmaker Lance Bangs.

May 22:Certified Copy, one of the most compelling and mystifying films of 2011, finally receives a home-video treatment more than a year after its all-too-limited theatrical run (Criterion, $29.99 Blu-ray, $28.83 DVD). Two mysterious characters, played by Juliette Binoche and opera singer William Shimell, meet for the first time – or so we think – at an art lecture in Tuscany. They spend the next 45 minutes or so wandering the city and getting acquainted, before they – and the film’s brilliant director, Abbas Kiarostami – suddenly pivot, essentially becoming different people. Were they playing characters (copies of themselves) the entire first half? Does it matter?

A reflection on storytelling, the nature of art and the nature of love and relationships, Certified Copy is an intellectual exercise worth multiple viewings and multiple viewpoints, which this edition is sure to provide. It includes an interview with Kiarostami, an Italian documentary on the making of the film and, most crucially, the home-video premiere of Kiarostami’s 1977 feature The Report, about a tax collector who is accused of taking bribes.

Also of interest this week: Perfect Sense (IFC, $24.99 Blu-ray, $12.99 DVD), an apocalyptic new sci-fi thriller under the direction of provocateur David Mackenzie. Ewan McGregor and Eva Green fall in love in a world that has lost its five senses. And the documentary Bettie Page: Dark Angel (Cult Epics, $16.93 Blu-ray) explores the final three years of the pin-up queen’s tumultuous life, including recreations of Irving Klaw’s lost bondage films.

May 29: Finally! John Cassavetes’ Too Late Blues, one of the most anticipated home-video releases in years, hits retailers from Olive Films ($26.96 Blu-ray, $17.93 DVD). The second feature from the independent maverick stars Bobby Darin as a nomadic jazz bandleader trying to keep his crumbling band intact while falling in love with a sultry soul singer with a troubled past (Stella Stevens). This week also marks the home-video debut of Nicholas Ray’s Run for Cover (Olive, $26.96 Blu-ray, $22.46 DVD), the director’s follow-up to his classic gonzo western Johnny Guitar, about a wrong-man ex-convict (James Cagney) who becomes a local sheriff.

Just in time for summer, Ingmar Bergman gets a double dip of seasonal dramas with Summer Interlude and Summer With Monika ($19.99-$27.99 Blu-ray, $14.99-$21.99 DVD). The latter is one of the director’s sexiest and most luminous movies, finally available in a transfer befitting its erotic splendor. It’s chock-full of special features, while Summer Interlude is an almost bare-bones disc, which is why it’s the far cheaper of the two.

June 5:A bonanza of Blu-ray premieres rule the week, with Clint Eastwood’s underrated masterpiece A Perfect World ($15.83) and his solid cop thriller Blood Work ($14.99) due out from Warner Home Video. 20^th Century Fox unveils The Grapes of Wrath ($19.99), possibly John Ford’s greatest achievement, and Universal bows three fully loaded editions of The Sting ($24.96 Blu-ray Book, DVD and digital copy; $14.95 Blu-ray, DVD and digital copy and $11.93 DVD and digital copy).

TCM Watch

At 12:45 a.m. May 16, set your DVR for Stars in My Crown, an American Western starring Joel McCrea and directed by French noirist Jacques Tourneur. Tourneur successfully transplants urban paranoia into a Western setting, and his film is one of the fiercest excoriations of racism I’ve seen anywhere. This movie is semi-rare, having only been made available on a limited Warner Archive DVD.

The brightest jewel in TCM’s May schedule is Jean Renoir’s A Day in the Country, which runs at 4 a.m. May 20 (following the director’s more readily available Rules of the Game). A curious footnote in Renoir’s impeccable career, the 40-minute Day in the Country is a bittersweet comic vignette that was supposed to have been expanded into a feature but was stymied by Renoir’s self-admitted “creative block.” At any rate, it’s never been released on DVD in the States.

At 4:30 a.m. May 28, TCM is running Don Siegel’s 1955 drama An Annapolis Story, a two-guys, one-girl romance set in a naval academy, which has earned comparisons to the early Oscar winner Wings. It has never been released on DVD. Finally, Let Us Live, running at 4:45 a.m. June 9, is an interesting prison drama with Henry Fonda and Maureen O’Sullivan, directed by the undervalued technician John Brahm, that also has never seen a home-video release.

Art: Today marks the last day of the Florida Atlantic University’s exhibit on the history of surfing in Florida (here’s a YouTube promo).

The University Galleries won a grant of almost $17,000 in late 2009 to research and mount the exhibit, which has been on display since March 17, and will head to Pensacola Museum of Art this summer. The show, Surfing Florida: A Photographic History, includes more than 50 photographs, a collection of historic surfboards, and contributions from hundreds of Florida surfers statewide.

The exhibit’s final day, which opens at 2 p.m. and closes at 8 p.m. at the Schmidt Center Gallery, will include slide shows with photographers John Tate and Nicholas Lugo, a history of surf music with James Cunningham, and free raffles all day, plus a cash bar (here’s another YouTube promo).

This is a unique, totally Florida exhibit, one that can best be appreciated by residents of the Sunshine State, and it will be an eye-opener for folks who don’t realize how long a history surfing has hereabouts. For more information, call 297-2966 or visit www.fau.edu/galleries.

Theater: The always welcome Laura Turnbull stars in Actors’ Playhouse’s regional premiere of Becky’s New Car by the eclectic Steven Dietz (More Fun Than Bowling, Lonely Planet, Yankee Tavern). She plays a housewife, mother and employee of a car dealership, living a pretty good life, but lately finds herself wondering what more exists for her beyond the usual boundaries of her world. Then, when a grief-stricken millionaire comes into the dealership and mistakes her for a widow, she does nothing to correct him and begins living a double life. Like most of Dietz’s plays, Becky’s New Car is picking up numerous productions around the country, far from New York. Continuing at 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables, through June 3. Call (305) 444-9293 for tickets.

Film: Commercial movies continue to be aimed squarely at teenagers, especially in the summer months, which is what makes The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel such a surprising anomaly. The title hotel, you see, has a clientele of seniors, specifically a handful of elderly Brits who have uprooted themselves and moved to Jaipur, India, where they find their new residence to be a dilapidated pipe dream of its proprietor (Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire). Elevating this charming, if decidedly predictable tale about living life to the fullest is such cinematic royalty as Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson and Bill Nighy -- to name just the most prominent cast members. The other star, of course, is India itself, with its sensory overload of sights, colors, crowds and culture. Opening this weekend at area theaters.

Music: The country trio known as Lady Antebellum has had an enormous amount of success in its relatively brief career since its founding in Nashville in 2006. Last month, they won the Best Vocal Group award at the Academy of Country Music, and tonight they’re appearing at the Cruzan Amphitheatre as a stop on their Own the Night World Tour. Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish also appears, as does Thompson Square. The show starts at 7, and tickets range from $29.25 to $54. Visit livenation.com or www.ticketmaster.com for details.

Pianist Robert Prester returns to the Steinway Gallery in Boca Raton on Sunday for a concert of pieces including a movement from his own piano sonata. Works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Prokofiev also are on the program for the concert, which starts at 5 p.m. Tickets are $20; he’ll play a similar program, though this time with the whole sonata, at the First Unitarian Church of the Palm Beaches in North Palm Beach on May 18. That concert starts at 8 p.m., and tickets also are $20. Call the Steinway Gallery at 982-8887 for more information.

The ultimate success of an opera or of a production finally comes down to the music – whether it’s good enough, in the first place, and in the second, whether it’s been sung well.

But something needs to be said now and again about a good staging. Although Florida Grand Opera has had many fine directorial hands at work over the years, its current production of Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, which closes tonight, is easily the smoothest and most seamless staging of an opera I’ve seen this company do.

Director David Lefkowich has carefully considered every part of this sometimes-creaky 1867 French opera and made every piece of business in it work, and work well. It’s a pleasure to watch, continually engaging and entertaining, and its conceits always have a justification in the text and supplement the drama rather than drowning it out.

The other good news is that the two leads in this production, Mexican soprano Maria Alejandres and French tenor Sébastien Guèze, have plenty of youthful singing strength and acting chops to spare, and they make an attractive and believable couple.

Alejandres, who sang Lucia for Palm Beach Opera’s Lucia di Lammermoor in March and will return to FGO next season as Violetta in La Traviata, has a big, clarion voice with a high register of impressive power and a pleasantly dark overall color. Her acting was credible at all times, even down to her slow, shuddering expiration next to her dead husband in the family crypt. Juliette is one of Alejandres’ favorite roles, and it showed.

Guèze has an even more taxing time of it, and he was every bit as excellent, singing with uninterrupted stamina, a large voice that moved smoothly between registers, and one that was persuasively enamored rather than over-excited. He and Alejandres blended well vocally, particularly in the Nuit d’hymenee duet in the bridal bed, and he was agile enough to fall dramatically from the tomb slab as the poison overtook him in the work’s final pages.

Fine supporting came from American mezzo Cindy Sadler in a minor role as Gertrude, the nurse; she has a rich and distinctive voice, and she was charming in a bit of good stage business involving a gang of Capulet roughs and a sword. The American tenor Daniel Shirley, an excellent Prunier earlier this season in Puccini’s La Rondine, was a good Tybalt, and in his short time on the stage his cutting, high-profile voice could be heard to fine effect.

Baritone Jonathan G. Michie was a capable Mercutio, though his Queen Mab song (Mab, la reine des mesonges) was somewhat on the slow and poky side, and didn’t have enough of the lightness and whimsicality it needed. Bass-baritone Craig Colclough, as Frère Laurent, sang with a fine sense of legato line and a good feel for the style of this music. But his voice, while attractive, needed to project more to make a weightier impact, and the same goes for bass-baritone Stephen Morscheck as Count Capulet, and baritone Joo Won Kang as the Duke of Verona.

Mezzo Courtney McKeown brought a sweet, pretty voice to her Stephano, though her Que-fais tu, blanche tourterelle would have benefited with some additional characterization so that the audience could really feel the song’s goading edge.

FGO’s chorus, directed by John Keene, deserves high marks for its work throughout the opera; many of the choral moments can sound tedious or corny if not sung with conviction and an understanding of Gounod’s style. But thankfully, that was not the case here, with the chorus singing everything from the opening prologue material to the cries of Justice! in the duel scene with precision and well-rounded vocalizing.

One of the best things about this production is the conducting of Kentucky Opera’s Joseph Mechavich, who led the proceedings superbly. Tempos were beautifully judged, and the orchestra played wonderfully for him. You rarely hear this score with the kind of big-boned force with which Gounod wrote it, but Mechavich let it rip, with first-rate results.

Of particular note was the playing of the cellos, who made so much of the returning love music without overdoing it; in short, Mechavich and the orchestra let Gounod be Gounod, and while the score may not have the harmonic imagination of Bizet or the flagrant imagination of Berlioz, it works perfectly well within its strictures, and it was gratifying to hear it be given without apology.

This is a handsome and beautiful production, borrowed from the Minnesota Opera where Lefkowich first created it. One of the most affecting things was the subtle way dance and motion were used to carry the plot along, such as in the wedding bed scene, where Romeo watches a pantomime of the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt, occurring over and over again, and unwinding backward. It’s a brilliant effect, as are the photographs of statuary, including the Virgin Mary, that are projected over the set at key moments in the score.

Other fine bits of stagecraft could be seen in the duel scene, where each side of the conflict moves in motion, swords at the ready, to jump in when the time is right, and then hold back. It is at once a corps de ballet move and a fine expression of coiled tension, and it’s highly exciting. There are no moments where Lefkowich hasn’t thought out exactly how he wants it to look, and yet it never seems over-inventive or distractingly busy.

It simply flows, with multiple moving parts that give the audience plenty to take in throughout a long evening of more than three hours, but with the orchestra, conductor and singers making the score a living, breathing thing, it works marvelously well as a conservative, yet fresh, take on this fine opera and classic story.

Roméo et Juliette closes tonight at Fort Lauderdale’s Broward Center for the Performing Arts. Curtain time is 8 p.m., and tickets range from $21 to $200. Call 800-741-1010 or the Broward Center at 954-462-0222.