I’m listening to two tenors – Philip Lee and Daniel Koek – sing a love duet. It’s O Soave Fanciulla from Puccini’s La Bohème, one of the most performed scenes in the opera repertoire, written for a male and a female voice. In our new English-language version, Rodolfo, a tenor role, meets Lucas, an online hook-up whose friends have given the nickname Mimi, and who is also sung by a tenor.
Having directed a much more conventional Bohème 30 years ago, I was concerned that casting two singers of the same voice type might flatten the colours and dynamics of the duet. But as we rehearse, Daniel’s Rodolfo becomes a confident, boastful figure prone to exaggeration and sentiment, while Phil’s Mimi is a tentative, uneasy presence who ultimately sees himself and the world with more mature eyes than his enthusiastic lover. I realise they actually have very different vocal qualities, which sharpens their distinctive spirits as characters. Two gay men singing some of the world’s most romantic music to each other brings out a vulnerability and honesty in Daniel and Phil as performers, while feeling like a comic transgression of the unwritten rules of opera.
