Last Updated on February 23, 2025
The Young Bohemians are Back!
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
A fifth revival of Richard Jones’ classic 2017 production Puccini’s four-act opera La Bohème has just opened at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. With a libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica and a story taken from Henri Murger’s novel Scenes de la Vie de Bohème, the opera charts the lives of six young ‘bohemians’, four men and two women, who are in a constant struggle to make enough money to survive.
None of the quartet of male friends – artist, poet, philosopher and musician – are having much success; the musician Schaunard’s most recent gig is playing his fiddle to an Englishman’s dying parrot and Rodolfo’s latest play is sacrificed to burn to stay warm But, they support each other in their narcissistic idealism, sharing their resources even as they scrawl childish pictures of naked women across their apartment walls. In La Bohème, Puccini and his librettists show a profound insight into the young male psyche; a combination of emotional immaturity with a need for male play, comradeship and validation.
Samoan tenor Pene Pati made an assured Royal Opera debut as the poet Rodolfo. He has a supple light lyric tone but enough vocal firepower not to be overwhelmed and he navigates the young poet’s emotional journey from infatuation – he aces the high Cs at the end of the ravishing love duet ‘O soave fanciulla’ – to guilt at not being able to provide for his sickly love, the seamstress Mimi, with sensitivity.
The women’s challenges are more real and pressing; whilst Mimi has a trade and is independent if poor at the start of the piece, there is no doubting the underlying gendered power relationships at play. Ukrainian soprano Olga Kulchynska as Mimi gives a sublime rendition of her introductory aria ‘Si, mi chiamano Mimi’ giving us a sense of her backstory. Kulchynska’s voice has a silken quality but she is fully in control of her dynamics and unafraid to use the latent power in the moments of great passion that Puccini provides for the character. Her voice melds beautifully with Pene Pati’s, making a convincing couple.
Russian baritone Mikhail Timoshenko plays the artist Marcello. His voice is rich-toned and he shows an intelligent musicality in the way he shapes the gorgeous melodic units that Puccini provides. La Bohème is as much about the fragility of the male ego as it is anything else and Timoshenko turns on a sixpence from being a wise paternalistic figure giving sage advice to Mimi, to a madman jealous of his flirtatious girlfriend Musetta, resplendent in a stunning scarlet frock.
Of course, who wouldn’t be driven mad by Musetta? I’ve seen this production several times now. Australian diva Danielle de Niese played the character as more of a coquette than the more comedic Aida Garifullina. Kiwi soprano Amina Edris, the real-life wife of Pene Pati who is also making her Royal Opera debut, strikes a balance between the two. there is a sense that Edris is more comfortable at the opera’s end as Musetta foregoes her gameplaying and turns into a moral force, supporting her friend as she dies. Marcello and Musetta’s duet ‘Quando m’en vo’, one of the showstoppers of the opera, had plenty of emotional authenticity and wonderful singing and got a deserved ovation from the crowd. Kulchynska recently played Musetta at the Met and I would be fascinated to see the two leading ladies swap roles.
As the musician Schaunard, Korean baritone and last-minute stand-in Josef Jeongmeen Ahn was physically and vocally agile if a little underpowered compared to the other men.
And making up the foursome, Russian bass Aleksei Kulagin as the philosopher Colline, another Royal Opera debutant, had an attractive gruff texture to his voice, while bringing a delicious tragi-comic sensibility to his aria ‘Vecchia zimarra, senti’ in which he bids farewell to his old coat before it is sold to fund help for the ailing Mimi.
Italian-born conductor and Puccini specialist Speranza Scappucci led her first Covent Garden stage production with style, bringing out the emotional nuances of the work that are so deeply embedded in Pucini’s detailed score. in 2023 Scappucci was appointed Principal Guest Conductor Designate of The Royal Opera and this Bohème bodes well for the future.
From the opening urgent string and brass conversation, The Orchestra of The Royal Opera House supported the ebbs and flows of Puccini’s melodies without sacrificing dramatic integrity and the strings, in particular, providing a gorgeous lush backdrop to the emotion. The orchestra was matched by the power and precision of the Royal Opera Chorus adding a hefty vocal punch to the crowd scenes. A special mention must again go to the well-drilled children of Greycoat School and the Cardinal Vaughan who added a youthful vigour and charm to the proceedings.
Designer Stewart Laing’s set for the opening scene of La Bohème, featuring the skeletal wooden beams of the Parisian attic garret where the four chaps live, acts as an effective frame for the nascent stirrings of the new realism, or ‘verismo’ in Italian opera, that Puccini is flirting within La Bohème just as Chekhov had done in theatre a couple of decades before. It is in the transition to the second act when the magical elements of this production start to emerge. A glistening snowfall is followed by the appearance of frames containing delightful evocations of Parisian shopping arcades in the Latin quarter which then transform into the chic Café Momus where a tipsy Musetta, with her leg up on the table, her hair loosened and her knickers off, sets about seducing a non-too-resistant Marcello.
Our society today seems just as obsessed with the ‘femme fragile’ as the late 19th-century audience for whom the consumptive female heroines of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata and then Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème provided an irresistible draw.
La Bohème
13 December 2024 – 17 January 2025
Royal Opera House
Bow Street
London
WC2E 9DD
Looking for something different? We also recommend Ruination, currently showing downstairs at The Linbury, Royal Ballet and Opera
