Oranges! Dates! Hot chestnuts! Nougat! Whipped cream! – to name only the most enticing treats on offer in the Latin Quarter on Christmas Eve, as depicted by Puccini in La bohème. Hawkers hawk, crowds shove, infants demand, in massed chorus. Together or alone, they greet the season against a backdrop of Paris, city of light, chimneys, smoke, wealth, poverty. The second act of this 1896 opera is a miracle of moving parts, dramatically and musically. Children and marching band bump heads with lovers at war and lovers – Rodolfo and Mimì – newly in love.
Few productions match Richard Jones’s for the Royal Opera, designed by Stewart Laing, with lighting by Mimi Jordan Sherin, in capturing this sense of all life and hope squeezed on to one stage. A trio of glass-ceilinged shopping arcades, at the mere push of a few stage staff, turns into a jostling Cafe Momus and then a lamp-lit plaza. New in 2017 and back nearly every year since, the latest revival (by Ben Mills) is scrupulously, extravagantly detailed and well sung, with the Ukrainian soprano Olga Kulchynska one of the most credible Mimìs in recent memory: a union of poise, modesty, passion, with a voice of pearl-like gleam.
