THEATER REVIEW: LA BOHEME

A scene from La Bohème.

Ending on a high note

By Ed Rampell

Giacomo Puccini is to opera what Gucci is to handbags: The gold standard. The libretto of the prolific composer’s 1896 La Bohème is by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, based on fictitious stories Henry Murger began writing in the 1840s. Puccini’s La Bohème set the template for productions about starving artistes in their garrets, aesthetic outcasts living on the fringes of society -- often in a not so Gay Paree. From Somerset Maugham’s Paul Gauguin-inspired The Moon and Sixpence to the 1990s rock musical Rent, which re-set La Bohème in modern Manhattan’s milieu of struggling artists, works in this genre bear Puccini’s indelible stamp, but rarely, if ever, surpass his masterpiece.

L.A. Opera’s presentation of La Bohème is true to the spirit and letter of Puccini’s four act-er; there’s no screwing around with the basics by way of updating the action to another time period, placing it at another locale and/or whiz bang special effects. These adaptations sometimes work -- as with Pacific Opera Project’s recent mounting of Cosi Fan Tutte, which cleverly transposed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s meditation on sexuality in 18^thcentury Europe to the American Civil War. But often these new fangled versions merely muddy the waters, add nothing to the creators’ original intent and worse, distract from same.

With his glorious Parisian sets and scrims, Gerard Howland visualizes Puccini’s howling, and are (pardon the pun, considering the opera) to die for. This veteran set designer has not only worked for numerous operatic companies, but also for theater, film (most recently, HBO’s just premiered Spanish Civil War-set Hemingway and Gellhorn), theme parks, Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones, etc., and Howland faithfully brings his pictorial panache to  Puccini’s Paris-set saga. His renderings of Latin Quarter garrets, rooftops and Café Momus exquisitely express the romanticism inherent in Puccini’s opera. However, Howland’s tavern set in Act III has too much empty space; the stage -- like nature -- abhors a vacuum. And depending on one’s seat in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, viewers may have to be contortionists in order to be able to see Howland’s Eiffel Tower at stage right.

Lighting designer Daniel Ordower aesthetically illumines the City of Lights with rapturous moonlight and twinkling constellations that likewise give form to Puccini’s amorous tale of Parisian Bohemians in love. They are brought to life by a dazzling, youthful cast, headlined by tenor Stephen Costello as the poet Rodolfo and soprano Ailyn Perez, an ailing seamstress who sews silky roses. Offstage, the performers who incarnate these lovers are not only real life  husband and wife, but both recipients of the operatic realm’s prestigious Richard Tucker Award. (Perez is the first Hispanic to ever receive this coveted honor, opera’s equivalent to the Heisman Trophy.)

The Bohemians include the musician Schaunard (baritone Museop Kim) and philosophy student Colline (bass Robert Pomakov). As is often the price of nonconformity, the characters are frequently stony broke, and to stay warm during Parisian winters must feed the flames of an insatiable stove with their works, used as kindling. The outsiders’ poverty weighs heavily upon them, especially on the consumption stricken Mimi, and the painter Marcello (baritone Artur Rucinski), who romances that Belle Époque belle of the ball Musetta (soprano Valentina Fleer), who aspires to be what Billy Joel dubbed “an Uptown girl.”

Impoverished Marcello has woes because he woos a beautiful gold digger who can attract wealthy, uh, patrons of the arts, to stick the bills with. Musetta and Marcello’s big number at the Café Momus (not to be confused with the Spearmint Rhino) brings down the house, as the sexual frisson between the two estranged lovers explodes with what may be the original table dancing. Their Act II delicious tabletop tangos are in the same scene as the jester Parpignol’s (tenor Ben Bliss, who also cut loose in the title role of L.A. Opera’s production this season of Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring) clownish antics, in one of the opera’s mass tableaux, which presented 60-ish performers onstage en masse, including members of the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus.

In his L.A. Opera directorial debut, Gregory Fortner (who crewed for Michael Moore’s Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine) adroitly helms the mise-en-scene, in mass and more intimate scenes alike. Conductor Patrick Summers is a worthy successor to Arturo Toscanini, who conducted La Bohème’s 1890s premiere in Turin.

The plot of La Bohème may be skimpy, but the forte of the operatic medium is to let themusic do the talking, so to say. Puccini’s sonorous score gives aural shape to the story’s lush romanticism, speaking volumes more than plot points and dialogue ever could. And, on a personal note, after experiencing this performance, I could see why La Bohème was my late dad’s favorite opera.

I also believe that Rodolfo’s final exclamation of grief as Mimi is consumed with consumption is where the term “the Screaming Mimis” is derived from. The Screaming Mimis has some off-color definitions I won’t repeat here, but it can refer to expressions of lamentation that are often hysterical in nature. At an after talk following the performance I attended, I asked the young married co-stars Perez and Costello if this was indeed the case, but the charming couple had never heard of this before. Perhaps this discovery -- if correct -- is your humble scribe’s contribution to opera reviewing?

In any case, as La Bohème marks the end of L.A. Opera’s current season, and opera fans will have to wait, alas, for four whole months until the new season starts. I feel like I have the Screaming Mimis. In any case, along with Giuseppe Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra and Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, La Bohème certainly ranks among L.A. Opera’s finest 2011/2012 seasonal offerings. Tomorrow is your last chance to see La Bohème.


La Bohème will be performed Saturday, June 2 at 2:00 p.m. at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: (213)972-8001; www.laopera.com.