Puccini - La Bohème (Dublin, 2023)

Giacomo Puccini - La bohème

Irish National Opera, 2023

Sergio Alapont, Orpha Phelan, Celine Byrne, Sarah Brady, Merūnas Vitulskis, Iurii Samoilov, Gyula Nagy, Lukas Jakobski, Eddie Wade, Fearghal Curtis, David Scott, Kevin Neville

Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin - 26th November 2023

If you think there is nothing radical you can do to enhance Puccini's La bohème, then you've probably only seen variations of John Copley's Royal Opera House warhorse or the classic Franco Zeffirelli stage production and haven't seen the extraordinary versions over the last decade by Stefan Herheim and Claus Guth. Whether that is strictly necessary, whether it adds anything to what is already there and more than sufficient on its own in Puccini's score is another matter. Updated to a different time period but not contemporary (or in outer space) you get the feeling that this is the direction taken by Orpha Phelan for the Irish National Opera production. Why risk spoiling what is already perfect by trying to impose a contemporary situation upon it.

It's arguable in any case that Henry Murger's original 1851 novel 'Scènes de la vie de bohème' is very much about a specific time and place, but there is clearly much that can be read in the interrelated story collection that says much about society, poverty and artists. That however is not the main concern of Puccini's La bohème, or perhaps it is but with a shift of emphasis onto the romantic relationships that are also present in Murger. Puccini's La bohème is at heart a love story, two love stories even, supported by some of the most soaring romantic and tragic music composed for an opera. The best thing about Phelan's INO production is that it doesn't get in the way of this, but supports it almost exactly the way an audience expects. The worse thing about is that it gives you exactly what you expect.

Indeed, as the other (extreme) versions mentioned above indicate, since they make such a huge impression, it's a long time since I've seen a La bohème so lacking in surprises or inspiration. Even the current Royal Opera House production from 2018 had a freshness to it. The danger of this is that with familiarity the opera comes across as little more than a series of set pieces, and when it adds up to set pieces there's little sense of true emotion or drama. Well, that's a risk in the first half at least, and no matter what the production does (even in the hands of Guth), it would be hard not to feel almost devastated by the progression of the final two acts as scored by Puccini.

La bohème's enduring appeal as a tragic romantic opera drama needs little critical support or analysis on that front. The balance of the work is masterful, its contrasting of Rodolfo and Mimi's spark of love on a downward trajectory from its moment of ignition contrasted by Musetta and Marcello's relationship heading in the opposite direction. Puccini plays these two troubled relationships out simultaneously to the same music, with superb use of motifs and repeated refrains that play out in contrasting contexts. As familiar as it has become, there is no question that it's still a masterwork.

Whether it has anything deep or important to say depends on the experience of the individual listener. Certainly I've seen little in opera that comes close to the ecstatic experience of discovering love and the agonising pain of losing it (only Shakespeare can match this in Romeo and Juliet and in Othello). More specifically, it's how Puccini's music captures the rush of young love, the sensation of wanting to have it all and have it now, only later having to deal with the realities of life and relationships. And it has to be said that the realities of poverty and its impact on relationships is not underplayed, even if it's often shown in the context of the brevity of happiness grasped by the bohemian artists in Paris in a specific historical period.

Poverty, illness and death impacting on love and relationships is of course not something that only relates to a distant past. Orpha Phelan however is not too ambitious in her setting of this between WWI and WWII apparently, although like the last INO production, the Jack Furness directed Faust, it's somewhat random and non-specific. There are few twists in each of the scenes in the four acts of this La bohème, although they do flow together well, creating the necessary climate, light and conditions you would expect to find in each of those scenes. It all feels rather perfunctory, trying not to impose on it anything beyond what is necessary for those scenes to work, but in consequence, not really inviting you to consider them in a new light. It has a tendency to just wash over.

Indifference to the situation of the bohemians is the last thing you want from this opera, but there is one considerable factor that prevents this from happening (aside from Puccini's score conducted well here by Sergio Alapont) and it's the fact that you have you have everything you expect from a Rodolfo and a Mimi in the casting of Merūnas Vitulskis and Celine Byrne. In fact, you'd be hard pushed to find any better today, not just in terms of their ability to meet the technical challenges, but also in terms of the necessary passion that goes into performing these roles. Unfortunately, that's more down to the professionalism of the singers and their familiarity with the roles, as the stage direction didn't really add a great deal of conviction to dilemma that Rodolfo and Mimi find themselves in. The same can be said for all the main roles, especially the fabulous performances of Sarah Brady as Musetta and Iurii Samoilov as Marcello.

Irish National Opera were I feel a little more adventurous in their first few seasons since they were formed in 2018, even in their approach to the big operatic standards. Orpha Phelan has also been much more adventurous in the past with beautiful interpretations for the INO's La Cenerentola and Lalla Roukh for Wexford. Following the first opera this season Faust, it feels like post-pandemic they are focussing on bringing an audience back and taking them along with them. It might not appeal to those who like their opera productions a little more avant-garde but I'll say this for their La bohème; playing out to full houses at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin with an opera like this, performed to this kind of standard, there are a lot of people who will be back for the next one. And the next one is Salome, and there's no playing safe with that one. 

Links: Irish National Opera

Puccini - La Bohème (London, 2018)

Giacomo Puccini - La Bohème

Royal Opera House, London - 2018

Antonio Pappano, Richard Jones, Michael Fabiano, Nicole Car, Mariusz Kwiecien, Simona Mihai, Florian Sempey, Luca Tittoto, Jeremy White, Wyn Pencarreg, Andrew Macnair, John Morrisey, Thomas Barnard

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

There's no other work of opera that hits you emotionally the way La Bohème does, and that's something you don't want to lose with an inappropriate stage production that sucks the life out of it. The challenge of finding a replacement for John Copley's long-running 40 year old production at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden then is not without considerable risk, as its production design and tone has become inextricably entwined with the opera and even seared into the consciousness of several generations of opera goers.

Of course it doesn't have to be that way. The genius of Puccini's musical composition and arrangements goes far beyond the mere tugging of heart strings. It's a model of precision that captures a variety of tones and moods, celebrating the spirit of youthful endurance through deprivation and set-backs, of young love and maturity of sentiments, of facing up to changes including the ever-present reality and inevitability of death. It is a serious work, a great work that speaks for itself.

A stage production doesn't really need to do too much to illustrate that any further, and it often seems like Copley's production captured the essence of the work and retained a freshness while Zeffirelli's similarly long-standing production, for example, now looks tired and overwrought. No matter how enduring or suitable the production, La Bohème can always do with a bit of a refresh, even if it's just to take the predictability out of it. And, essentially, that's really all Richard Jones's new production does. Whether it improves on the old production is debatable - although I can't imagine many would think so - but it does highlight new parts of the work that might be lost through over-familiarity.

The locations remain much the same and are instantly recognisable, if a little more minimally stylised in design, which is not surprising since it's a Richard Jones production. The garret in Act I is sparsely furnished, its furnishings presumably gone the same way in earlier occasions as Rodolfo's play - into the furnace to heat the place. Narrow wooden beams bear down on the limited roof-space, a small door leading into it and a skylight above. Its bohemian artist inhabitants do indeed look like scruffy artists in second-hand clothes that may once have been smart, with long hair and unkempt beards. No hipsters here, thank goodness.

Act II is also refreshing for its move away from the traditional French street cafe depiction of Cafe Momus for a rather more obviously upmarket posh restaurant. Once outside of the garret however it also becomes clear that Richard Jones's production has also done away with 1840's Paris Commune setting for a location that is a little more generalised, but certainly evokes the nearby Covent Garden market in some kind of idealised Quality Street box way. It's a little bland, but functional and it doesn't get in the way of the musical performance, which since it's Puccini under Antonio Pappano, means it's in very capable hands, and indeed, Acts I and II are everything they should be; urgently, sweepingly romantic, playful and lyrical.

That also makes up for the lack of imagination shown in the designs for Acts III and IV. Really, Act III is just a stripped-back version of the familiar cold night outside a warm lively tavern scene, with a stage bare but for falling snow and a cardboard-box looking tavern, albeit with Marcello's wall paintings displayed on the outside (which at least shows he can paint, something that the invisible canvas in Act I and his crude stick figure drawings in Act IV don't really get across). The tavern slowly sliding into the background by itself however as the Act progresses just looks weird.

If it still works reasonably well in Act III and on its return to the even more bare garret room (it must have gotten quite cold again) in Act IV it's got a lot to do with Pappano's musical direction but also the performances of the singers. And to be fair Richard Jones's direction of the performances is also good and undoubtedly an important contributing factor to the production still working effectively as a whole. It's not the most adventurous La Bohème, but even La Fura dels Baus didn't feel like they could do much with it and let's not even get into Claus Guth's bohemians in space misfire. Only Stefan Herheim has really been able to bring a completely new approach to in his Den Norske production, deconstructing the opera, exposing its workings and revealing it as the musically impressive and emotionally harrowing masterpiece that we already know it is.

Essentially however La Bohème reinvents itself every time you bring fresh new voices in to reinterpret the work and there's an impressive line-up here. Michael Fabiano's Rodolfo is a revelation. He's a great singer that brings something new and distinctive to a role every time I've seen him, even in the most familiar roles (Alfredo in La Traviata, Don José in Carmen). His Rodolfo is superb; relaxed and confident, charming in humour and persuasive in his romantic intentions towards Mimi; there's a sweetness also in his voice and impeccable delivery that is just irresistible. Nicole Car is perhaps a bit too energetic and full of life as Mimi after her cough and stumble on his doorstep, but just as the music and character develop, so too does the emotional charge between the two of them in the final two acts. The ending is of course devastating.

Links: Royal Opera House

Puccini - La Bohème (Paris, 2017)

Giacomo Puccini - La Bohème

L’Opéra National de Paris, 2017

Gustavo Dudamel, Claus Guth, Nicole Car, Aida Garifullina, Atalla Ayan, Artur Rucinski, Alessio Arduini, Roberto Tagliavini, Marc Labonnette, Antonel Boldan, Bernard Arrieta, Jain-Hong Zhao, Fernando Velasquez

Culturebox - 12 December 2017

No, no matter how much you try to rationalise it, there could surely be no justification for director Claus Guth reinventing La Bohème as a science-fiction space adventure. As strange as Guth's productions can often be, this one for the Paris Opera was always going to be a bit of a stretch. But you've got to admire Guth's nerve for even attempting something like this at La Bastille, where a large conservative element in the audience don't usually take kindly to such directorial indulgences. I couldn't wait to see what Guth did with this, even if failure and the disapprobation of the Paris audience was likely to be the outcome of such a conceit.

As outrageous as the idea might seem and as outlandish as it indeed looks seeing La Bohème take place on a space station crash-landing on a distant moon, Guth's approach to making it fit actually isn't all that surprising. It's one step removed from 'it was all a dream' brought on by bereavement and deprivation leading to mental breakdown (as Stefan Herheim also basically proposed in his reverse deconstructed Oslo production), and in a futuristic space context that kind of idea tends to play out like Solaris (which has already been adopted to opera in recent years by Detlev Glanert and Dai Fujikura), a work which leaves room for some in-depth consideration of the nature of human relationships.

La Bohème then actually has some suitability for this kind of feverish nightmare outlook. The forced comedy of impoverished artists facing starvation projecting their creative imaginations towards surreal displays can be seen as a distraction from the reality of their circumstances. The 'pretend' feast and acquiring of riches in Act I then results in the surrealism of fantasies of dining at Café Momus and in a parade of life that surrounds the toy seller Parpignol. The charade becomes harder to maintain as the realities hit home on Act III, and in Act IV the playing becomes a grim dance of death.

In such a creative mindset, Marcello's painting of the Red Sea in Act I could just as easily be a vision of the Red Planet, couldn't it? Well, in Guth's production it literally is the view outside the window that faces a small team of astronauts whose ship has broken down, but that's about the only easy transition in the production between a garret in fin de siècle Paris and the cabin of a rocket ship. Elsewhere, like Rodolfo, you're going to have to be a bit imaginative in finding any convincing connection or rationale for the production's extraterrestrial setting, but Guth tries to give us one based on Henry Murger's original stories being viewed by the protagonists as older people reflecting on youth and mortality ...only in an outer space setting evidently.

The captain's log, rolled out on a screen, tells us that the four-man team's mission has gone off course 136 days into their space voyage; their reactors are down, resources are almost exhausted and time is running out for the crew. In an effort to keep their spirits up they let their imaginations run free on an idealised version of a long gone past. Seen largely from the perspective of Rodolfo's disintegrating grasp on reality, it's no surprise that suspended in a state between sleep and waking delirium his mind returns to happier times and he is haunted Solaris Hari-like by visions of his lost love Mimi.

It's absolute nonsense - quite literally, of course, since we are perceiving events through a mind on the edge of complete breakdown. But at the same time that doesn't add or bring anything new to the state of mind of La Bohème's characters living on the margins of society, or to the nature of the relationships of love, friendship and camaraderie that develop between them in their straitened circumstances. Worse, Guth's transposition of it onto another planet in some science-fiction future runs the risk of actually distracting from the sentiments of the work; which is just wrong, even if you think that La Bohème is a sentimental work (which I don't).

The attempt to sustain the idea of course just becomes more and more ludicrous the longer it goes on. By Act III, the pilots have been driven to make a forced landing on a barren planet or moon, and the inevitability of their fate lost in the void of space - and a lack of oxygen to the brain - just pushes their delusions further into absurdity. Yes, you can probably make a connection between Rodolfo in a space suit cut off emotionally from a Mimi who contorts and cavorts in a red dress on an airless dusty moonscape - although you're more likely to think it's a wonder she's only coughing - but you would get that anyway from a traditional production without the added distraction.

Act IV is increasingly desperate, and I don't just mean for Rodolfo. With Schaunard and Colline already dead, their suits running out of air, Rodolfo starts to imagine himself and Marcello as part of some kind of cabaret act on the moon, complete with glittering strip curtain backdrop. Parpignol is still cavorting around as a mime artist (please!), not for the first time being presented as a kind of death-like master-of-ceremonies figure (cf. Herheim again). Full marks to Claus Guth for this effort at provocation - I sometimes feel the Paris audience deserve such baiting - but I don't think La Bohème deserves it.

I also felt curiously unmoved by Gustavo Dudamel's conducting of the score, which highlighted the delicacy of the composition but lacked any real feeling for the work. It floated along pleasantly enough, but never made any emotional connection with the drama, although it's hard to tell how much of that is down to the failings of the stage direction. The singing too felt merely adequate for the most part, Atalla Ayan's Rodolfo a little harsh-sounding and imprecise, but Nicole Car's Mimi certainly stood out, and Aida Garifullina was a sparkling Musetta - not bad for figments of Rodolfo's imagination and memory. I doubt that Guth's space-age production of La Bohème will be considered as imaginative or memorable, but it's unlikely to be forgotten in a hurry.

Links: L’Opéra National de Paris, Culturebox

Puccini - La Bohème (Turin, 2016)

Giacomo Puccini - La Bohème

Teatro Regio Torino, 2016

Gianandrea Noseda, Àlex Ollé, Irina Lungu, Kelebogile Besong, Giorgio Berrugi, Massimo Cavalletti, Benjamin Cho, Gabriele Sagona, Matteo Peirone, Cullen Gandy, Mauro Barra, Davide Motta Fré

Opera Platform - October 2016

La Bohème is one of those works whose former strengths no longer carry as much weight for me as they once might have done. The beautiful arias, the Romantic sweep of Puccini's heart-tugging arrangements and melodies are still beautiful, still emotionally and dramatically effective, but they no longer seem to be where the true heart of the work resides. The gaps in the plot and character that I would have once regarded as its weaknesses on the other hand now seem to be more important to the enduring universality of the work as a whole. Gianandrea Noseda and Àlex Ollé seem to be attempting to address both points and striving for a better balance in the Teatro Regio Torino's 120th anniversary production of the first performance of La Bohème there, but it could also be seen as trying to fix something that doesn't really need to be fixed.

The piecemeal adaptation of Henry Murger's story collection once might have been regarded as a weakness in the structure of the opera. There is little flow between the four distinct acts, each of them having to sum up a 'where they are now' situation, with all the troubles incidents and twists and turns that their lives have taken in-between left to the side. That wouldn't be so bad if the scenes that remain weren't padded out with what often feels like unnecessary colour, weak characterisation and a lot of joking around that isn't all that funny.

Those might seem like weaknesses, but Puccini turns them into virtues, mostly. There's nothing weak about Puccini's musical colouring for the scenes, and if the use and repetition of themes might not always meet the strictest codes of musical and dramatic integrity, they do create a continuity that is necessary to link the four Acts. If a theme is repeated in a different context from its original use, it often serves as a contrast and a 'reminder' of where it originally came from. The horsing around of the budding artists can still be irritating and feel pointless, but it is important to reflect a wider view of the situation that has a major impact on Rodolfo and Mimi. It's not the love story that is important in La Bohème, as much as the work being about how love tragically comes second place to paying the bills.

That's not a very romantic way to look at one of the greatest love stories in opera, but it is a mistake to idealise La Bohème and prettify the abject poverty of the "bohemian life", where the protagonists are fighting on a daily basis to heat their tiny rooms, trying not to starve and striving not to die of some terrible disease. While it's important to reflect this, it is also important to show how life goes on, how friendship and companionship endure and - regardless of the weight you think Puccini applies to this aspect - it's all there in the opera. There may also be huge gaps in Rodolfo and Mimi's relationship, but those gaps just widen the huge gulf between the ideal and the reality and leave space for the listener who has experienced the travails of love to reflect on the truths in their relationship.

It might not be perfect but, as is often the case with Puccini, the imperfections just leave space for consideration, interpretation and playing with the colours. La Bohème however is not a work that demands any reconstructive or deconstructive modernisation. Indeed, were it not for Stefan Herheim's charged Oslo production, you would think that this is one opera that is surely immune to too much directorial intervention. Critically however, Herheim managed to play to the traditional strengths of the opera, deepening its sentiments without resorting to sentimentality and in La Bohème, there's a thin line there that it is easy to cross. The challenge for Àlex Ollé is the same one of reigning in and opening up.

A member of La Fura dels Baus, the Catalan theatre team who are not exactly known for restraint in their productions of elaborate concepts and spectacular technical innovation, Ollé has however been capable of scaling down where there is no need for additional overemphasis. La Bohème very much has its own distinct world, but whether it is set in Belle Époque Paris or a more contemporary updating isn't as relevant as much as showing the relationship between the real world and the lives of the characters. Alfons Flores's set designs for the Teatro Regio Torino production depict a more contemporary world, but it is still recognisably a poor district inhabited by ordinary people.

What Àlex Ollé's direction seems to set out to emphasise - or maybe reflect more than emphasise - is the ordinary and the universal application of this world. It's not a tragic story of love and poverty in olden times, but a familiar one today, where love is unable to overcome the other practicalities of living. The garret room set of Act I and IV then is not a little enclosed space here; it's one room of many, where undoubtedly similar stories are played out. You occasionally see another couple - one set out on a romance at the same time as Rodolfo and Mimi's is ending - but these are incidental details that are not over-complicated or over-emphasised to the detriment of the main story.

With Café Momus sliding in on Act II - and looking like a properly swanky restaurant for a change rather than some dive - there is some effort to keep a sense of flow and continuity, as well as the all-important contrast that Puccini plays upon for effect. Like the rest of the Acts, Act III has a familiar configuration, just slightly updated, retaining what is necessary for the dramatic storytelling, while also trying to keep it relevant, or 'grounded' if you like, in a way it wouldn't be if it were kept period. It's not a realistic depiction of poverty and misery by any means, but it's not smothered in schmaltz either.

If La Bohème doesn't flow dramatically, in the music at least Puccini hits straight at the heart, and in the case of this work he is surely entitled to play to the emotions. Gianandrea Noseda however shows that you can adhere to the melodic, the romantic and the dramatic qualities of the music without ladling on the syrup. If this means that the tear-jerking qualities of the work are underplayed, well that's not necessarily a bad thing unless that's what you want, in which case this could be a little disappointing. I would say a fair proportion of a La Bohème audience would expect a little more emoting in the music and the singing than they get here.

Irina Lungu is a more delicate soprano than the full-cream Mimi we are accustomed to, and while she doesn't always hit the big moments she can bring some wonderful poignancy to something like "Addio, senza rancor". Her duet in this scene with Giorgio Berrugi is one of the high points here, Berrugi very much with a classic bright lyrical Italian tenor that is perfect for Rodolfo. With the combination of Lungu and Berrugi and Puccini's emotional expression at its finest, the conclusion of La Bohème still can't be anything but heart-wrenching, despite the efforts of the creative directors to downplay it slightly. It spared me being left a wreck at the conclusion, but I'm not sure that many would thank them for it, as that surely is the primary effect Puccini sets out to achieve.

Links: Teatro Regio Torino, Opera Platform

Puccini - La Bohème (Wiener Staatsoper, 2014 - Webcast)

Giacomo Puccini - La Bohème

Wiener Staatsoper, 2014

Dan Ettinger, Franco Zeffirelli, Dmytro Popov, Krassimira Stoyanova, Marco Caria, Aida Garifullina, Adam Plachetka, Jongmin Park, Alfred Šramek

Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming - 7 November 2014

Time hasn't been kind to Franco Zeffirelli. Just recently, the 91 year-old director was unhappy that the La Scala in Milan were selling off his famous production of Aida to Kazakhstan. It's not entirely clear whether he was upset because he wasn't consulted on the sale or whether his pride was hurt that such a famous production was being consigned to the scrapheap after decades of performances at the home of Italian opera in favour of a new modern style of Regietheater. Respect for his work and the fear of no longer being relevant is undoubtedly a factor however, with Zeffirelli talking about being "airbrushed" out of Italian opera history.

I doubt that Zeffirelli's work as an opera director will vanish from the memory quite so easily, and many of his productions are still doing faithful service in major opera houses all over the world. Practically the foundation of many opera houses, the high production values of many of his productions would be considered by a generation as nearly definitive versions of some of the most famous works of opera. For better or worse, the Franco Zeffirelli production of La Bohème has endured and has practically set the standard for nearly every other production of the work for the last 30 years. Seen most recently at the Vienna State Opera, the traditional period setting of Bohemian life in Paris in the 1840s does however look to be starting to feel its age...

...and look it too. Act I's garret scene not only has an authentically squalid and dilapidated appearance of a Bohemian residence from the 1840s, but the set looks like it actually hasn't been cleaned in 170 years either. It's grotty and cold, every detail speaking of misery and poverty. Which is how it's supposed to look. It's relevant to the characters and the situation that Puccini is depicting, the outward condition of the building contrasting with the brief flame that sparks up not just for those brief moments that Rodolfo's play heats them as it burns in the stove, but for the love that is ignited when Mimi arrives in the garret, and explodes into life in Act II's Cafe Momus scene. So overwhelming is the impression created by the poverty of Act I and the winter snows of Act III that it's almost inevitable that the brief flaming of Mimi and Rodolfo's love will be just as quickly snuffed out.

It's an effective production design then, even if it is rather old-fashioned by today's standards. It might be somewhat sepia tinted, but Zeffirelli's vision is not exactly nostalgic for an idealised version of the past. It perhaps places too much emphasis on the actual physical location, but the emotional content should still be universally recognisable for anyone who has experienced the pangs of young love or who has lived as a student and struggle to find their own place in the world. Seen in that light, there's nothing modern or revisionist about the direction or the characterisation. La Bohème speaks out for itself through Puccini's music and through the performance. It's a true masterpiece that will undoubtedly endure for those very reasons that it expresses universally recognisable situations, characters and sentiments, and Zeffirelli's staging and the singing at this 2014 revival of the production prove that well enough.

The age and familiarity of the Zeffirelli production does however have another drawback for the cast. The cast here is a strong one, but seeing other singers wearing the same costumes and going through the same motions can't help but invite comparisons to other great singers who have sang these parts in this same production in the past. The cast here are all good, but not exceptionally so, and not in any way that raises the bar for an interpretation of this work. On their own terms however, it's sung very well. Krassimira Stoyanova is one of the most impressive sopranos around at the moment. She is practically without peer in major roles like the Marschallin and Tatiana, but her Mimi is not one of her best.

Her Act I 'Si. Mi Chiamano Mimi" feels a little rushed and the poignancy of the scene isn't there. Some of the reason for that might be down to her interaction with Dmytro Popov's Rodolfo.  Popov sings the role very well, but it's a little anonymous in terms of characterisation, and there's no real chemistry at work here, something I've noticed before with Stoyanova's performances. Act III (the critical lynchpin Act of the opera as far as I'm concerned), came over much better in terms of the delivery and the sentiments expressed, showing the evident qualities that are there in Stoyanova's technique and in the simply wonderful sound of her voice. It still doesn't measure up to the high standards that have been set for this work, but that just underlines the importance of context and direction to the work as a whole. The other roles were similarly well sung, with Aida Garifullina's Musetta and Jongmin Park's Colline bringing a little more character to the piece.

The Vienna Staatsoper's next performances being broadcast are Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina on November 21st and Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro on November 28th.  See the Live Programme on their website for details.

Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming programme; Staatsoper Live at Home video

Puccini - La Bohème

Giacomo Puccini - La Bohème

Den Norske Opera, Oslo, 2012

Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Stefan Herheim, Diego Torre, Vasilij Ladjuk, Marita Sølberg, Jennifer Rowley, Giovanni Battista Parodi, Espen Langvik, Svein Erik Sagbråten, Teodor Benno Vaage

Electric Picture

The first notes you hear in this 2012 Den Norske Opera production of Puccini's La Bohème are the beeps of a heart monitor on a life support system that Mimi lies attached to in a hospital bed.  The beeps take that familiar flatline tone as Mimi breathes her last and doctors rush in to the opening chords of the score proper in a vain attempt to resuscitate her, while Rodolfo looks on aghast, completely lost in his own grief.  This evidently isn't a traditional way to start La Bohème, but it is very much a typical Stefan Herheim touch where the standard linear approach is just not an option.  As a director, Herheim is clearly interested in getting into the minds of characters whose actions and motivations we can take for granted from over-familiarity, and La Bohème is a very familiar opera.  Not here it isn't.

Having established that Mimi dies - which, let's face it, even if you weren't familiar with the opera, it's a fate that is signalled clearly enough by Puccini right from the moment she totters and stumbles into Rodolfo's garret, often with a hefty tubercular cough for good measure - Herheim is more interested in the impact her death has on Rodolfo after the opera ends, considering the times and the troubles they have shared together.  Here then, viewed in flashback, La Bohème becomes a study of grief and bereavement that Rodolfo struggles to work through and eventually come to an acceptance of his loss through his poetry and his friends.  If anyone can make such an idea work, working within the fabric of Puccini's scoring without necessarily contradicting sentiments that are implicitly there in the nature of the music itself, it's Herheim.  Whether you think there's any value in distorting the work to that extent is of course debatable, but there is certainly more intelligence in this thoughtful and considered approach than your average straight production that merely "performs" the work, Herheim taking into account the very real emotions and troubles of characters whose lives are played out in art and poverty.  It's certainly at least a refreshing alternative for anyone who is more than familiar with the long-running Copley and Miller productions of the work at the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum in London.

His grief played out in flashback then, the past and the present coexist simultaneously for Rodolfo, who has no means of pulling them together.  The hospital ward seen at the start then opens up to a more traditional view of the past in Rodolfo's Parisian garret where he and Mimi first met, the cleaner, surgeon and nurse taking up roles as the other characters (introducing Musetta into the process rather earlier too).  The sense of perspective however shifts in a subtle way to tinge the meeting with that sense of grief for the inevitability of what has happened/will happen.  When Rodolfo poses the question 'Qui sono?' to himself here then - looking thoroughly confused - it takes on an entirely different meaning, one that involves real soul-searching, as well as a certain existential dilemma.  Compressing and overlapping time in this way simultaneously concentrates all the joy and happiness of that fleeting moment of beauty, while forcing one to consider how brief and vulnerable are the flames of love on those candles that are so soon to burn out.  The same flames of love will burn Rodolfo as well as provide warmth through the winter.  Rather than contradict the emotions of a beautiful piece (Act 1 of La Bohème is for me something incredibly powerful), this production genuinely enhances what is already there.

There are lots of touches however that aren't going to be to everyone's liking.  Already in this First Act, Mimi collapses, her wig is removed to reveal a bald head that bears the signs of chemotherapy (this Mimi is dying from the rather more contemporary killer of cancer rather than the traditional old-fashioned disease of tuberculosis), and she is ushered back into that modern hospital bed that looms at the corner of Rodolfo's consciousness.  The shifting of the off-kilter sets from one 'reality' to the next - incredibly well designed to transform so smoothly - have an unsettling effect not only on Rodolfo but on the viewer also, leaving them unsure at times about what exactly is going on, and why the familiar figures in the work don't behave in character in the way that we expect.  Mimi "dies" again at the end of Act II, for example, and her medical chart is added to the Café Momus "bill" that has to be paid at the end.  I think the implication is clear enough.  Unwilling to "pay the bill" however the near-demented Rodolfo here is so impassioned that you get the impression he believes he could bring her ghost back to life by the end of the opera.  Wouldn't that be something?  But no, Herheim stays faithful to the intentions of the work.  "Per richiamarla in vita non basta amore" - "Love alone will not suffice to bring her back to life", he says in Act III.  It's all there in the libretto if you want to look for it.

The absurd modern twists on an otherwise faithful staging can be a little off-putting - or will be simply intolerable to some viewers - but they can also be extremely powerful.  If you consider that Puccini's writing here is extremely manipulative and has a tendency towards heavy pathos, sentimentality and schmaltz, Herheim's staging forces you to listen to the music in a different context, and the effect is phenomenal.  Puccini, like the listener, knows Mimi's fate from the outset, and doesn't pretend otherwise.  The tragedy isn't so much that Rodolfo doesn't know it, or that he is unwilling to face up to her flirtatious and mercenary nature, or even the realisation that she's seriously ill and going to die, but rather, that he is on some level aware of it, but still loves her despite it all.  All those implications are there in Puccini's score and brought out in the development of the opera if you want to explore them, and Herheim does.  Using Rodolfo's inability to come to terms with his grief as a means of showing his struggle to deal with the inevitability of what must occur not only makes this almost indescribably sad, it's also an effective way of dealing with some of the problematic issues surrounding Puccini's generously expressive scoring.

Aside from the technicalities and impressions created by Herheim's direction and Heike Scheele's set designs, the performance of the work itself is overall very good.  The added dramatic twists moreover rather than getting in the way of the performances only seemed to intensify their impassioned delivery.  More so Rodolfo than Mimi, it has to be said, Diego Torre singing the role superbly, with consideration for the different nuances of meaning applied to his character.  By focussing the attention on Rodolfo's state of mind and resigning Mimi to little more than a ghost however, the consequence is that it weakens Marita Sølberg's contribution to the work, but she sings it well in the context.  The subjective view of Rodolfo also has a consequence of reducing the relevance of the other characters to relatively minor roles, but even if it loses some of the contrasting elements of the nature of relationships that is brought out by the Marcello and Musetta pairing (adequately sung by Vasilij Ladjuk and Jennifer Rowley), the tightening of the focus isn't necessarily a bad thing in this work either.  Svein Erik Sagbråten's recurring Death-like presence as the landlord Benoît, Parpignol, Alcindoro and a Toll gate keeper could also be seen as bringing more of a consistency to the colourful but marginal episodes of the work.

On Blu-ray, the production looks and sounds as good as you would expect from a recent HD recording.  The singing sounds a little echoing in both the PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mixes, but I found that the stereo track sounded much clearer through headphones.  The recording and mixing of the orchestra however is gorgeous, with lovely tone and detail in the orchestration.  It's a good account of the work - Eivind Gullberg Jensen directing the opera for the first time - attuned to the performances and only slightly adjusted in one or two places for the tempo and tone to match the production.  There are a few very short interviews on the disc (around a minute each) with the director, conductor and cast, done backstage in the intervals presumably during a television broadcast of the live performance.  The BD is all-region, with subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Korean.

Puccini - La Bohème (Robert Dornhelm, 2006)

Puccini - La Bohème

Bertrand de Billy, Robert Dornhelm, Rolando Villazón, Anna Netrebko, George von Bergen, Boaz Daniel, Nicole Cabelle, Vitalij Kowaljow, Adrian Eröd, Stéphane Degout,

Axiom Blu-ray

There is no reason, in theory, why it should be any more difficult to bring an opera to the film screen than any other piece of musical theatre. In the case of opera, actually, one would think it should be relatively straightforward – the most popular repertory operas have at least a hundred or two hundred years of conventional productions and experimental stagings behind them, ample time to explore and fine tune the dramatic core of a piece. With opera however, there are however other technical considerations and conceptual decisions that have to be made when adapting it for the screen as a movie as opposed to the more common approach of shooting it as a filmed stage production. At its most successful, in Brian Large’s live TV film version of Tosca or in Joseph Losey’s Don Giovanni, there is a something to be gained from the filming of scenes in the actual locations specified in the libretto (The Roman locations of Castel San Angelo and others in Tosca and the Venetian Palladian constructs of Don Giovanni), that go some way to helping the viewer see past the exaggerated theatrical mannerisms and problematic issue of integrating and syncing the live or recorded singing performances to the dramatic action.

A literal approach may in some cases be the best way of counteracting the heightened emotional realism of conventional opera performances when brought to the screen, but, just as with stage performances of opera, there is room for a more naturalistic or experimental approach when the themes are sufficiently universal and not necessarily tied to the period. Such would perhaps be expected to be the case with Puccini’s La Bohème, which relates a familiar subject that has not dated in the 100 or so years since its writing. It may be set in a Paris of the 1830s, where guards patrol the gates to the city, where starving poets and artists suffer for their art in freezing garrets, and pale heroines die long drawn-out deaths from tuberculosis in the name of love, but essentially the theme is as old as the hills – it’s about the joys and the vicissitudes of love. It’s somewhat surprising then that the film’s director, Robert Dornhelm, with two of the brightest young stars in opera on board for a feature film adaptation of Puccini’s classic tearjerker La Bohème, settles for an approach that remains resolutely stage-bound – not filmed live, on location or during performance, but using opera production values, sets, lighting, costumes, theatrical acting and mannerisms that belong very much to a traditional period staging of the opera.

Naturalism is not the operative word for Dornhelm’s approach to this film version of La Bohème, but then really, naturalism has little to do either with Puccini’s adaptation of Henry Murger’s collection of stories in Scènes de la vie Bohème. Even accepting the notion of love at first sight, the romance that develops here between a seamstress and a poet is rather precipitous (particularly in this film version which takes their introduction a little bit further than usual with a bedroom coda to Act 1) and the structure of the opera is somewhat schematic, the four acts being divided fairly equally into the birth of love, the joy of love, the torment of love and the death of love. What gives this romance conviction in Puccini’s musical scoring is the harmonisation, both vocal and emotional, that exists between the two leads, and the counterbalance to this in the tempestuous relationship between Musetta and Marcello, which brilliantly follows a similar trajectory but practically in reverse. Quite wonderfully, Puccini's score plays on this reversal and counterpoint in the overall structure with the repetition of themes - in one scene making Mimi's theme express the discovery of love, and in another using the same theme to express the end of love, as if they are indeed just flip-sides of the same emotion.

There can be no doubts about the evident chemistry between Netrebko and Villazón, a partnership that has achieved much acclaim and success in recent years, and that is successfully carried across to the screen in this film version of La Bohème. Rolando Villazón’s intensity, enthusiasm and expressiveness is well suited to the overheated emotional content of a Puccini opera and particularly to the role of Rodolfo, but his acting remains very much in the theatrical style. Anna Netrebko’s more demure and reserved performance perhaps fares somewhat better when transferred to the screen, without losing any of her character’s necessary reserves of emotional depth. The character of Mimi, signalled quite clearly from early on as being ready to pop her clogs at any moment, can be somewhat pathetic (in the pathos sense of the word), but Netrebko, as we’ve already seen in her performance of Violetta in La Traviata alongside Villazón again (reviewed here), has the ability to play the doomed heroine who is unlucky in love without sentimentality. Despite the urgent emotional underscoring of Puccini’s music that almost demands a heightened performance to match, she manages to give her character a small sense of dignity and nobility, reacting to her circumstances with quiet passion and internalised desperation. Netrebko’s breakdown scene with Rodolfo in the snow by the tavern in Act 3 in particular is magnificent, her Mimi writhing around like a soul in torment, on the verge of breaking up with her love and close to death, yet driven to keep going by the sheer force of the love that exists between them – one that is fully felt despite the vast ellipses in the storyline between acts. The beautiful heart-rending quartet with Musetta and Marcello that ends this scene is also marvellously performed, another highlight of the production.

As good as all this is in operatic terms, Robert Dornhelm’s filming of La Bohème doesn’t particularly distinguish itself on the screen. While there are one or two distinctive and effective moments, nothing really feels inspired and, at best, the direction can be described as functional, serving the material reasonably well in a traditional staging that feels familiar from countless other productions right down to the lighting, colouration and décor. At worst however, the dissolves, superimpositions and split screens employed are simply a distraction, being particularly overused in Mimi and Rodolfo’s respective introductions in their garret scene ("Chi son? Sono un poeta" and "Si, mi chiamano Mimi"), while the lip-syncing – technically largely unavoidable, though some of it was recorded live – only adds to the lack of naturalism.

Uninspired and uninspiring though this may be, ultimately this production of La Bohème is indeed about the singing and playing of Netrebko and Villazón, and Dornhelm’s production, for all its safe and traditional staging, provides a more than adequate platform for that to be enjoyed by audiences for years to come, and succeeds moreover in wringing out all the emotional charge from what still remains a powerful and moving opera.

Disc
La Bohème is released on Blu-ray in the UK by Axiom Films. The disc is BD50 and the film comes with a 1080/50i encode. Inevitably, this has an impact on the running time, which consequently runs to 109 minutes as opposed to the theatrical running time of 115. Whether this has an impact depends on the original source - it may have been shot at 25fps and slowed down for theatrical release, but I have no information to suggest this is the case. If the image has been speeded up to make it 50i, this could have implications for the accuracy of the audio, but the Blu-ray this may have been pitch corrected to allow for this. Extra features are Standard Definition PAL (576/50i). The disc is All Region.

Video
While the film often looks great, and there are certainly no serious problems with the transfer, the benefits of the High Definition transfer are not always evident on this Blu-ray release. Perhaps on account of the colour timing and the bright lighting that looks more theatrical than naturalistic, contrasts are strong and shadows are exceptionally dark. The transfer does exhibit signs of being somewhat DVNR processed, with haloing also being visible in places, but overall detail and colouration however are good and the image does retains a little grain that keeps it looking like it is from a proper 35mm film negative. Stability and fluidity are relatively good, but some minor flicker may be detected in backgrounds.

Audio
The audio track comes in the form of a fine DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, with a supplemental Dolby Digital 2.0 track. The handling of the sound is wonderful on the lossless DTS track, the surround distribution enveloping and effective. Vocals remains up front and, in the main, the singing is clear and warmly toned, hitting the high points without any trouble and balancing vocal harmonisation well. I thought I could detect some distracting microphone sounds and noise on the track in one or two places where the recording is less than perfect, but not with any kind of frequency. I detected no such problems with the orchestration, the lossless audio track enabling the instrumentation to achieve a wonderful natural tone, with fine dynamic, particularly in the clear rounded bass tones.

Subtitles
English subtitles only are included. They are optional and in a white font. When spread across two lines, the subtitles lie partly in and partly outside the frame. I wasn’t entirely happy with the translation which is just plain inaccurate in places, and also prone to miss out not insignificant lines. Apparently, the subtitles were supervised personally by the director, so I think this is another area where his decisions are less than effective.

Extras
Interviews are conducted with the director Robert Dornhelm (23:14), with Anna Netrebko (6:00) on the character of Mimi as opposed to Musetta, with Rolando Villazón (5:10) on the film experience and how it differs from opera, with Nicole Cabelle (2:47) on her toning down of Musetta and with Geroge von Bergen on the opera itself and Marcello’s role in it. It’s Dornhelm’s interview which is most revealing, the director admitting that he initially edited the film with numerous green-screen effects and blending (the utterly kitsch results can be seen briefly in the Making Of). He confesses that he has no great feeling for opera, and that in the case of La Bohème he believes that there was no reason to reinvent or modernise, since opera it is a dying artform that belongs in a museum – an incredible and telling admission that I personally couldn’t disagree with more.

The Making of La Bohème (28:31) however is rather good – taking time to interview the cast on their feelings (most of the interview footage is reused here), before getting behind the scenes and eavesdropping in on the rehearsal and filming. Since an opera film production is rather different from a regular film production, this is very interesting indeed. There are also some very funny outtakes at the end, and – of course – footage of Villazón goofing around on the set. Great fun.

The extras are rounded out with a Trailer (1:30) and a Stills Gallery of 21 promo stills. A booklet is also included with the package.

Overall
While there is no substitute for the ambience of a live performance in an opera house, the High Definition image and sound on Axiom’s Blu-ray release of La Bohème is certainly the next best thing and, for most of us, the only real option to see the pairing of Netrebko and Villazón in one of the most dramatic and romantic of operas. Yet again, their collaboration and respective qualities proves to be perfectly matched, and even within the limitations of a filmed performance and Robert Dornhelm’s mostly rather uninspired, traditional staging that plays safe in aiming for the opera fan more than the cinema-goer, there are nonetheless some truly great moments that make it all more than worthwhile.

This review was first published on DVD Times/The Digital Fix in 2006