Few operas plunge in so directly as La Bohème. One is immediately transported to Paris – or at least to Puccini’s version of it. The opening hits the spot in this revival of Covent Garden’s most frequently performed opera of all time, with the house’s principal guest conductor designate Speranza Scappucci setting a cracking tempo, and the bohemians playing it for laughs even when the love interest kicks in.
Richard Jones’s 2017 production, revived here by Ben Mills, keeps its distance from the score’s emotions. It focuses instead on getting the maximum action out of designer Stewart Laing’s striking settings. Snow falls throughout, to remind us this is Christmas. The first and last acts occur in what looks like a self-assembly rooftop garret, the second in a dazzlingly kaleidoscopic street and cafe scene (surely too bourgeois for the Latin Quarter in those Balzacian days), and the musically masterly third in a stark dark dawn setting, with only a small hut for cheer.
Not everyone will like this, and the tricks can seem cold-hearted. Yet the accumulating chaos of the Cafe Momus scene, which even Stravinsky is said to have admired, is gloriously anarchic. But this is not a production that aims to probe too meaningfully into character or social context. Nor to make an audience re-examine its Bohème expectations. It feels instead like an affectionately quirky, at times almost comic book, version of this most compact of operas. Happily, there is no attempt to outwit the unfailingly whip-smart theatricality that Puccini’s handling provides.
Scappucci’s relish for the score is obvious, though sometimes she lays it on a bit, with meaningful slowings and accelerations that the piece does not require to make its impact. At first this seemed to disconcert the singers, notably the Samoan-born Pene Pati’s Rodolfo, whose attractively light tenor took time to settle into its best register in act one. Olga Kulchynska’s Mimi commanded greater vocal depth from the start. As a pairing, they were at their most lyrically persuasive in the act three reconciliation.
Among a notably young and light-hearted group of bohemians, Mikhail Timoshenko offered a vigorously sung and acted Marcello, Aleksei Kulagin a notably dignified Colline, while Josef Jeongmeen Ahn deputised at short notice as an unusually athletic Schaunard. Amina Edris captured the decency as well as Musetta’s considerable vocal allure and theatrical glamour and Eddie Wade makes the most of his cameo as the landlord Benoît.
