OPERA REVIEW: LA BOHÈME

Pictured: Dimitri Pittas, Grazia Doronzio

JOHN COULBOURN, Special to TorSun
07 OCT 2013
R: 4/5

TORONTO - There’s a reason LA BOHÈME is one of the most popular operas in the world — and in staging it in a new co-production for the Canadian Opera Company, the Houston Grand Opera and the San Francisco Opera, director John Caird seems to have plugged directly into it.

Caird’s new production of Giacomo Puccini’s most enduring work recognizes that, despite the fact that LA BOHÈME deals in no small part with the tragic romance between the poet Rodolfo and the frail seamstress Mimi, what Puccini and his collaborators, librettists Giuseppe Giacoso and Luigi Illica created in their adaptation of Henri Murger’s short stories is an operatic celebration of life and art, even in the face of poverty and death. As a result, Caird’s new production, currently playing at the Four Seasons Centre, fairly spills over with life. In fact, sometimes — specifically in Act II, set on Christmas Eve in the Café Momus in Paris’s bustling Latin Quarter — Caird seems overwhelmed by all that life, letting it crowd out the story he has heretofore done a pretty fine job of telling.

In this, Caird shares blame with designers David Farley, whose execution of the fine idea of a belle époque Paris which flows from the brush of Rodolfo’s painter friend, Marcello, claims far too much of the stage, and Michael James Clark, who relies too much on that life to light up the scene. Toronto audiences, after all, have grown accustomed to LA BOHÈME played out on a pretty spectacular set in an earlier, now retired production and this scene in particular is likely to make you regret its passing. Happily, however, Caird has been given a cast that more than makes up for the production’s shortcomings at almost every turn.

In the pivotal roles of Rodolfo and Mimi, tenor Dimitri Pittas and soprano Grazia Doronzio are vocally almost perfectly matched and do a fine job of capturing the romance, the passion and the pathos of their story. Meanwhile, life goes on in the (admittedly rather expansive) garret loft Rodolpho shares with his good friend, Marcello (baritone Joshua Hopkins), and two other artists — the philosopher Colline, sung by bass-baritone Christian Van Horne, and the musician Schaunard, sung by baritone Phillip Addis.

And despite their shared poverty and the double drama Rodolfo and Mimi’s romance and Marcello’s stormy affair with the coquette Musetta (soprano Joyce El-Khoury in fine voice despite the fact she seems to have parachuted in from another production), Caird manages to capitalize on his characters’ youth and their shared passion for art and life, using it as a powerful counter-balance to the tragedy at its heart, making death very much a part of the vibrant life they share.

As usual, it is a production well served by the COC Orchestra, this time under the baton of conductor Carlo Rizzi, who adroitly keeps a firm rein on Puccini’s gorgeous score without ever appearing to drive it. While it isn’t likely to make it even more popular, this is at least a production that should do nothing to diminish the place LA BOHÈME holds in the world of opera.