Jonathan Miller’s La bohème is back and, to coin a phrase, it rocks like 2015 never happened. That was the year English National Opera, in its darkest days of self-lacerating panic, entrusted Puccini’s beloved opera to maverick director Benedict Andrews, he of the heroin-cool heroine. That fiasco was junked after a single run and now, to no one’s surprise, the company has reverted to the tried and tested.
Miller advances the action by thirty years to a semi-monochrome cityscape that Isabella Bywater has designed, handsomely, to evoke the Paris of romantic photographers like Brassaï and Cartier-Bresson. Giant scenic elements trundle into different configurations as the tale moves between the poorer quartiers of Paris, with an especially atmospheric third act set in a shabby arrondissement near the city’s perimeter.
It is not without its problems, chiefly the first-floor garret set where everyone sings in front of a slanting roof that sends voices straight up to the fly gallery. The present cast copes better than most of its predecessors with this acoustically troublesome design flaw, but it remains an issue. So does Natascha Metherell’s revival of the busy Act 2, which is no longer as precisely managed as in 2009 when Miller first conceived it and has shed some of its incidental humour. Even more carelessly, Musetta (Nadine Benjamin in a musically sumptuous, Josephine Baker-inspired performance) is stranded two rooms away when Mimì’s need for gloves is mentioned, yet she still offers to go and buy some.
The production gives Natalya Romaniw a house debut to savour, and the Welsh diva conquers London with the radiant bloom of her spinto soprano. She sings with such intelligence: for example, as death approaches, her Mimì succumbs to confusion and adds heartbreaking emphasis to the last four words of “I’m always called Mimì / But I don’t know why”.