LA BOHEME (OperaUpClose/Soho Theatre on Demand)***

 

By Dave

Link: https://sohotheatreondemand.com/show/laboheme

Available until: Unknown. You can rent for 48 hours.

Updating opera to the present day doesn’t always work. Our lives are so different from the way people lived when a lot of the most famous and best-loved operas were composed at least a hundred years ago so understandably, it can be very difficult to set them in the present day. I’m sure you’d also have big problems if you tried to set an opera like Dr Atomic in the 19^th century. Everything would just seem wrong.

OperaUpClose really have done brilliantly to make this La boheme work. It is a bit weird if you have to go outside to contact a doctor but maybe phone reception is awful in that attic. I think maybe the reason Robin Norton-Hale's production works is that they don’t make a big thing about the new setting. They’re wearing modern clothes, there are modern references in the text where appropriate (Rodolfo is writing for a website) but they don’t go crazy. While the director’s clever ideas do matter in a production, the number one priority should be to tell the story and that’s what this production does. (And if it does feel totally weird and wrong that Rodolfo would let a girl with a cough into his flat, this is a 2011 production. The mysterious virus of 2020 existed only in a Dean Koontz novel.)

OperaUpClose have chosen to perform the opera in translation and there’s nothing wrong with that. The fact the story has been relocated to Soho doesn’t mean this is necessary – the original La boheme is set in Paris but sung In Italian – but a good English translation can be more accessible than the sticking the words on a little screen above the stage. Seasoned operagoers get used to that and it feels right but it can take new operagoers a while to get into the whole looking up and down thing.

However without wanting to be rude, this is quite an unusual translation. Translating an opera isn’t just about choosing words where the stress falls on the right syllable. This is important but the stress on its own isn’t enough – where possible you need to consider the length of the syllable too. The words also need to sound natural for the character. When the clarity of a sentence is particularly important, you also need to be careful about which vowels your singers are singing on the high notes. It’s also not just the emphasised syllable of each word that matters – the emphasised word in the sentence is also important. There are a lot of things to consider and I’m not saying I would do any better because trust me, I would do much worse! But some of the lyrics didn’t quite ring true or didn’t really fit the music.

But the music in general was great. There’s no room in the Soho Theatre for a full orchestra so Elspeth Wilkes played the whole score on the piano. I feel a bit disloyal to Puccini when I say that the piano worked just as well and after a while, I stopped noticing it as being unusual – it was just the music and it was brilliant. Elspeth is an absolute virtuoso technically and she’s a really sensitive performer too. I never felt anything was missing.

The singers aren’t ROH standard but the thing about the ROH singers is that they’re miles away. The Soho Theatre is small so it’s going to be an extra intimate experience in person and audiences will get the same details as we get onscreen. The characterisations are very well-balanced between verismo opera dramatics and modern young people who live in a crappy flat in London. You get the love and the drama but these are also people you might possibly meet one day.

Anthony Flaum is a great Rodolfo with a really good light tenor and a real modern ‘nice guy’ air about him. Louisa Tee is a very polite and classy Mimi, genuinely embarrassed at being a nuisance and not making it too obvious what she wants from Rodolfo. She has a very attractive soprano and she copes very well with the modern translation.

Tom Stoddart is an exuberant Marcello who is also capable of some real strops so he’s perfectly suited to Sarah Minns’ Musetta, who is a fluid-voiced, attention-seeking drama queen with a not unappealing neediness which disappears at the end, when she’s helping Mimi and is perhaps finally doing something she feels is valuable. Alistair Sutherland and Julian Charles Debreuil are a very likeable Schaunard and Colline and the four men together have a great camaraderie, as well as blending really well vocally. I could totally see them as the next Il Divo. James Schouten probably plays La boheme’s first ever DVD Seller and I like it.

If you want to try opera, this would be a very accessible choice to start with as you’ll be experiencing the medium of opera in a familiar world which often helps if you’re trying something new. If you’re interested in the concept of updating opera to the present day this is a great example of how to make it work. But if you’re just an opera fan who’s looking for a new opera performance, I definitely wouldn’t rule this one out. It might not be quite what we’re used to but it’s good.