OUT OF HER COMFORT ZONE AT THE OPERA

The current streamlined production of La Bohème (directed by Floris Visser) takes this well-loved opera out of its comfort zone. Does the road-like stage set invite us to understand this opera as a narrative journey?  Instead of bright colours, and large choruses, this is La Bohème en grisaille. Restricted to shades of grey on a simplified stark set, visually the mood is toned down, but the misty ambience and greyness keeps the audience focused on the story.

The opera produced in 1895; rather like the impressionist drawings of the time, provided insight into an exotic lifestyle. Bohemian Paris was another world and the respectable top-hatted opera-going toffs were able to peer  at it through their elegant opera glasses. La Bohème has an enduring appeal. What this production lacks in colour it makes up for in physicality and clever stage use. The playful bonhomie and passions of the “fun loving and free loving” creative poor are expressed in physical theatre. If the greyness indicates the physical poverty of the characters their actions and passions are anything but drab.

There are plenty of artistic references, including the famous short film Le balon rouge by Albert Lamorisse, to establish the Parisian setting, alongside a fantastic café scene loaded with the kind of mischief that is a trope of Paris in the nineteenth century. The simplified set allows the lighting department to get to work and the use of shadow play is filmic and impressive.

The audience’s hearts are captured by the harrowing fragile existence of our consumptive heroine Mimi (performed by Romanian soprano Aida Pascu). They bring their own empathetic, emotional response to this tragic tale of love and loss. The music swirls up from the orchestra and swoops over the audience, giving musical expression to their most tender feelings.

The fragility of the human condition is further emphasised by the character of Death (Christopher Lemmings). Chillingly recognisable, he is ever present in the silent stoic form of a gentleman in a tailcoat. Throughout the opera he shadows Mimi – getting closer and then receding. Death’s presence confirms our greatest fear for the life of this heroine. In the finale Mimi and Death finally acknowledge one another and walk slowly into the distance, in one heart stopping moment I thought that they were going to dance off stage. As Mimi passes into the light, her lover Rodolpho’s (sung by tenor Andrés Agudelo) searing pain; like that of a wounded animal, breaks across the stage like an uncanny new dawn and it hangs in the air as the curtain goes down.

© Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photography by Marc Brenner.