Left - Roy Best as Rodolfo and Alison Rae Jones as Mimi. Cover - Angela Taylor as Musetta with cast
In some ways, La Bohème is an opera-lover’s opera, with
all the traditional hallmarks that can make this art form seem
inaccessible. It tells the tale of a group of starving Parisian
artists: their passionate loves, small triumphs and many losses. But
the great thing about Puccini’s opera is that it delivers its love and
tragedy with plenty of humour, beautifully drawn characters and music
that’s well worth the price of admission.
Opera is as much about strong acting as it is strong voices, and
director Hugh Halliday and his cast clearly understood this. Our hero
is Rodolfo, a poet, who falls for his neighbour Mimi, a beautiful girl with a worrying cough. Roy Best added a twist to this conventional operatic hero by making Rodolfo
a slightly shy and fidgety character. This may have been off-putting
for some, but it fit with the idea of the destitute poet working away
in his freezing garret. Danielle Calder’sMimi was very easy to fall in love with – an essential quality for this tragic tale to work. Mimi and Rodolfo’s dreamy, mournful courtship is complemented by the passionate tempers of their friends Marcello and Musetta. Phillip Calcagno was in danger of stealing the show with his charismatic Marcello, while Angela Taylor’sMusetta had the same hypnotic effect on the audience as she did on her many suitors.
These four parts form the backbone of La Bohème, but the supporting roles were never forgotten. Laurence Meikle was extremely likeable as musician Schaunard, as was Graeme Russell as philosopher Colline. Even Roger Howell brought humour and charm to the roles of Rodolfo’s landlord and Musetta’s sugar-daddy. Importantly, everyone from Rodolfo and Mimi down to the chorus seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely.
The vocals, for the most part, were difficult to fault, though there was one exception. Best’s voice,
beautiful though it was, simply didn’t carry above the sound of the
orchestra much of the time. This was particularly obvious in his scenes
with Marcello and the boys, when Best was all but drowned out by the stronger singers. Thankfully, there were few other problems. It was a treat to listen to Calcagno’s confident baritone, Calder’s sweet, lilting soprano, Taylor’s impressive high-notes and the professional unison of the cast as a whole. Conductor Greg Hocking and the Melbourne Opera Orchestra also did a wonderful job of bringing Puccini’s score to life.
The production looked the part, with simple sets and costumes that
evoked 1830’s Paris without intruding on the action. This relatively
small opera company, while it may be working within the constraints of
a tight budget, didn’t let us down in any of the visual aspects of the
production.
You could argue that the measure of a good La Bohème
is whether that final scene gets your tear ducts working. This
production delivered on that score, and it’s possible even those who
had been dragged to the theatre by their loved ones were pretending to
have something in their eyes. We were left with a reminder that the
South East Regional Touring Opera will be back in November with
Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, prompting more applause from the crowd.
SERTO/Melbourne Opera presents La Boheme Puccini
Venue: Canberra Theatre
Date/Time: 7:30pm, Saturday 5 April 2008
Duration: 150 minutes, including intervals.
Prices: $55.00 - $20.00
www.canberratheatre.org.au
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