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

Cleary - Vampirella (Dublin, 2017)

Siobhán Cleary - Vampirella

Royal Irish Academy of Music, Lir Academy of Dramatic Art, 2017

Andrew Synnott, Tom Creed, Sarah Brady, Philip Keegan, Tim Shaffrey, Eimear McCarthy Luddy

Smock Alley Theatre 1662 - 23rd March 2017

Aside from Marschner's Der Vampyr and one or two other obscure early 19th century works based on John Polidori's creation, the vampire story is one aspect of mythology that hasn't really been explored in opera. Bram Stoker's Dracula however has tended to present the myth in a relatively more modern context with Gothic overtones that tap into deeper psychological drives and impulses arisng out of a specific period in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century when psychoanalysis was starting to probe the dark horrors of the repressed Victorian-era mindset. Rational thought was starting to replace barbarism and superstition, but in spite of this the modern twentieth century would unleash two greater monsters in the form of two world wars.

If opera hasn't yet seen fit to explore these areas and open up the themes of vampire mythology, film and literature has; particularly in the writings of Angela Carter. It's somewhat appropriate then that it's a female composer who writes a contemporary opera based on an Angela Carter story and radio play and that Siobhán Cleary's second opera should also have its world premiere in Dublin, the home town of Bram Stoker. Vampirella manages to draw from that sense of shared history and the collective fear that Stoker tapped into, but applies it to the modern imagery of the Goth and Carter's modern feminist interpretation - some might say subversion - of myth and fairy-tale. There's something of an overturning of the roles here from the traditional fairy-tale, with the Prince of modernity not so much coming to wake the Sleeping Beauty of the past as unwittingly kill her and all that she stands for.

There is a similar blend of historical and modern revisionism in the Dublin world premiere of Vampirella. The set designs adhere closely to the familiar imagery of the dark and Gothic almost to the point of caricature, with dry-ice aplenty and dark figures in black cloaks bearing candles populating the stage. The venue of the Smock Alley Theatre, originally built in 1662, added an historic quality that if it didn't exactly give it a sense of authenticity at least provided the same kind of contrast between the historic and a modern outlook on mythology that seeks to reinterpret it for a new age. If nothing else, it provided acres of atmosphere.

Even though the story remains set in the year 1914, the plot itself is very much concerned with bringing the vampire myth into the modern age. Count Dracula is dead, killed by a virgin on a virgin horse, but his spirit and practices live on in his daughter, the Countess. It's another innocent who will be the death of the last of this line, a young English soldier called Hero travelling on bicycle through the Carpathian mountains while on furlough. The storyline follows along much the same path as the original Dracula story; Hero encountering strange locals from a village near the castle, becoming somewhat bewitched by the presence of the Countess despite her unusually pointed teeth, accidentally cutting himself and witnessing the troubling response that she has towards the spilling of his blood.

Despite the Gothic trappings and imagery of the traditional vampire story, the more modern outlook upon it is brought out in librettist Katy Hayes' adaptation of Angela Carter's story. Hero is versed in the psychoanalytical investigations that have recently been documented in Vienna, particularly in relation to female behaviour, and he can't help but apply them to what he knows of the Countess. At the same time he is aware of natural drives and impulses and cannot deny an erotic attraction in the deadly situation that can't be entirely rationalised. For a young reserved and somewhat innocent Englishman, this presents quite a complicated set of feelings.

Nature is evoked in a number of ways, again much in the same allegorical 'children of the night' way that Stoker may have applied it in his story. It's a cat who scratches the young Englishman, unable to resist its nature and the implication of course is that the Countess and her line - as a representation of the barbaric ways of the past - are no more capable of resisting those same natural urges and inclinations. In 1914 however, we are now on the cusp of the modern age, capable of analysing and understanding behaviour, but despite the apparent victory of rationalism over barbarism, Hero will end up dying in a war that takes blood-letting to an even greater and more impersonally mechanised scale.

There's a collision of ancient and modern in the storyline and the challenge for composer Siobhán Cleary is to find a match for that in the music. What kind of influence can you draw upon to create a contemporary Gothic score? Some of the influences might be evident and others surprising, but Cleary comes up with an unusual blend drawn from a number of sources that successfully finds its own voice specific to the drama. There's frequent use of a chanted chorus with tight harmonies, some traditional European folk influences, some string quartet arrangements that suggest the romanticism of Schubert (Death and the Maiden?) or something more like Brahms in order to evoke a sensibility closer to the turn of the twentieth century setting.

The hints of older forms of music are blended with a more modern use of sounds, electronics and atmospherics that have more to do with the Spectralism of Grisey and Murail, but greater use of the harp gives a softer and more romantic edge that is more akin to the music of Kaija Saariaho. Individual instruments are also assigned to individuals, but even the singing of each of the characters has its own style. Sarah Brady produces a beautiful and assured lyrical soprano for the Countess; Tim Shaffrey's narrative baritone is electronically enhanced and supplemented for the observing spirit of Count Dracula; Philip Keegan's no-nonsense Hero is given more spoken dialogue than singing; as is Eimear McCarthy Luddy as Mrs Beane, although with her character's sing-song Scottish accent, she is more prone to breaking out into lyrical phrasing in a lovely singing voice that isn't used enough.

The latter character also introduces an element of humour into the otherwise moody proceedings, a tone that is undoubtedly in the spirit of the original to prevent it from being taken too seriously or gothically, but it doesn't always seem to sit well. The varied patterns, textures and styles of the music however do manage to acquire an unexpected coherence through Andrew Synnott's conducting of the RIAM chamber orchestra. Lyrically and dramatically Vampirella might not make any great statement, but it shows Siobhán Cleary as a composer willing to try to find an appropriate lyrical style for the needs of a dramatic situation that incorporates many of the characteristics of the Gothic-Romantic; not so much viewing the horrors of the past through the eyes of today, but reflecting on today with a foot in the past.

Links: RIAM, Smock Alley Theatre, CMC Ireland