Scottish Opera, 16/05/2017
Puccini : La bohème
Chorus of La bohème
Orchestra of Scottish Opera
Stuart Stratford
This new production of La bohème begins with a curious, but interesting premise. The curtain rises to the sound of an accordeon, and a singer interpreting a couple of well-known French cabaret songs. We see a flea market, tourists idly perusing the stalls, and into which a woman clearly undergoing chemotherapy wanders. She takes an interest in some shellac recordings at one stall, and the stall-holder puts a disc on an old gramophone player, complete with horn. From that, the sound of the opening of La bohème emerges, into which the live orchestra blends to start the opera properly, and during the course of the first act, the woman quietly slides into the action to become Mimì herself.
From that point, the Franco-Canadian production team of Doucet and Barbe set the action in 1920s Paris, save for the start of Act 3 which, at least until the entry of Mimì, returns to modern times. Visually, it's quite successful, with the kind of wit one has come to expect from Doucet and Barbe's work. There are visual nods at various period celebrities - Schaunard in outdoor wear looks like Aristide Bruant (who died around this time, mind you), Musetta is clearly modelled on Josephine Baker, complete with diamond-collared leopard (a life-size china replica on wheels, amusingly enough) - and some gorgeous flapper dresses. However, it's all just good-looking window-dressing. It brings nothing particular to the music or the socio-historical context, it swears moderately at the libretto, and the end comes too abruptly to round out this dying woman's fantasy in any satisfactory way.
The vacancy of the production would have been less annoying if the musical side had compensated for it. However, while the orchestra, under Stuart Stratford, gave a fine performance, vocally it left something to be desired. First of all, there were a lot of small imprecisions of timing - none of the off-stage singing was really well-coordinated - and sometimes of pitch. David Stout (a good, robust Marcello), Božidar Smiljanić (Schaunard) and Damien Pass (Colline) were all perfectly respectable, though Pass's "Vecchia zimarra" was rather bland. Nadine Livingston's Mimì was quite touching for the most part, but I found the tremor in her voice a little off-putting, rather than endearing, while Christopher Turner, while possessing a nice tonal quality, was clearly underparted as Rodolfo. He was consistently submerged by the orchestra at climaxes, and in ensembles, his tenor failed to sound over the stronger, deeper timbres of his fellow Bohemians. Of all the soloists, the best, by some way, was the lively, vividly presented Musetta of Jeanine De Bique.
This represented a characteristic production of La bohème these days to me. It's an opera that is very much taken for granted; producers feel they absolutely have to do something clever to provoke the audience's attention, and the vocal casting tends to the routine, where it's an opera that can truly repay having care and attention lavished upon it, despite its familiarity. I certainly prefer this kind of production to the Rent-inspired New York loft excursion we got last time, but it's still a hollow exercise, without any really interesting vocal performances to offset it.
[Next : 21st May]
Chorus of La bohème
Orchestra of Scottish Opera
Stuart Stratford
This new production of La bohème begins with a curious, but interesting premise. The curtain rises to the sound of an accordeon, and a singer interpreting a couple of well-known French cabaret songs. We see a flea market, tourists idly perusing the stalls, and into which a woman clearly undergoing chemotherapy wanders. She takes an interest in some shellac recordings at one stall, and the stall-holder puts a disc on an old gramophone player, complete with horn. From that, the sound of the opening of La bohème emerges, into which the live orchestra blends to start the opera properly, and during the course of the first act, the woman quietly slides into the action to become Mimì herself.
From that point, the Franco-Canadian production team of Doucet and Barbe set the action in 1920s Paris, save for the start of Act 3 which, at least until the entry of Mimì, returns to modern times. Visually, it's quite successful, with the kind of wit one has come to expect from Doucet and Barbe's work. There are visual nods at various period celebrities - Schaunard in outdoor wear looks like Aristide Bruant (who died around this time, mind you), Musetta is clearly modelled on Josephine Baker, complete with diamond-collared leopard (a life-size china replica on wheels, amusingly enough) - and some gorgeous flapper dresses. However, it's all just good-looking window-dressing. It brings nothing particular to the music or the socio-historical context, it swears moderately at the libretto, and the end comes too abruptly to round out this dying woman's fantasy in any satisfactory way.
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| Jeanine de Bique (with leopard!) as Musetta in Scottish Opera's new production of La bohème (Sally Jubb ©2017) |
The vacancy of the production would have been less annoying if the musical side had compensated for it. However, while the orchestra, under Stuart Stratford, gave a fine performance, vocally it left something to be desired. First of all, there were a lot of small imprecisions of timing - none of the off-stage singing was really well-coordinated - and sometimes of pitch. David Stout (a good, robust Marcello), Božidar Smiljanić (Schaunard) and Damien Pass (Colline) were all perfectly respectable, though Pass's "Vecchia zimarra" was rather bland. Nadine Livingston's Mimì was quite touching for the most part, but I found the tremor in her voice a little off-putting, rather than endearing, while Christopher Turner, while possessing a nice tonal quality, was clearly underparted as Rodolfo. He was consistently submerged by the orchestra at climaxes, and in ensembles, his tenor failed to sound over the stronger, deeper timbres of his fellow Bohemians. Of all the soloists, the best, by some way, was the lively, vividly presented Musetta of Jeanine De Bique.
This represented a characteristic production of La bohème these days to me. It's an opera that is very much taken for granted; producers feel they absolutely have to do something clever to provoke the audience's attention, and the vocal casting tends to the routine, where it's an opera that can truly repay having care and attention lavished upon it, despite its familiarity. I certainly prefer this kind of production to the Rent-inspired New York loft excursion we got last time, but it's still a hollow exercise, without any really interesting vocal performances to offset it.
[Next : 21st May]