English National Opera celebrates Puccini’s centenary with a revival of Jonathan Miller’s ever-popular 2009 production of La Boheme, sung by a young cast and conducted by Celia Cafiero.
One of the most popular operas ever written, it remains the definitive statement on friendship, love, poverty and death among the poor artists. The soaring, rapturous score is irresistible. It is hard to believe it could have failed at its premiere in Turin in 1896 and that so many critics could have continued to underestimate it because it was so popular.
The libretto is based on Henri Murger’s autobiographical novel, Scenes de La Vie de Bohème, first published in 1848 and dealing with his youthful artistic struggles, which had taken place some twenty years earlier.
The action is updated from the 1830’s to the 1930’s. Isabella Bywater’s designs are inspired by Brassai’s photographs. (The prostitute in Act 3 is straight out of Brassai’s portfolio.) The clever two-story high set, which divides and revolves, gets a round of applause and so do the stage management who manoeuvres it.
Joshua Blue is the poet, Rodolfo. Charles Rice, Dingle Yandell and Patrick Alexander Keefe are his mates. Madeline Boreh is Mimi, the seamstress, who dies of malnutrition. Vuvu Mpofu is Musetta, the coquette with a heart of gold, who behaves outrageously in the Café Momus.
It is difficult not to be moved; the score is one of the great tearjerkers of all time. I sometimes feel I could go on listening to the love duet in Act 1 and the quartet in Act 3 forever.
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