Impressive Royal Opera debut by Ruzan Mantashyan in Bohème revival

Richard Jones’ 2017 production of Puccini’s eternal tear-jerker La bohème is revived once again at Covent Garden, this time running for 13 performances with a merry-go-round of three wholesale cast changes. If you can, choose a night when the Armenian soprano Ruzan Mantashyan is singing Mimì. You won’t be disappointed – she’s a star. On opening night, making her Royal Opera House debut, Mantashyan swept all before her in a delightfully controlled, touching performance, enhanced by a voice that would melt the stoniest of hearts.

Alas, the same can’t be said for her lover Rodolfo. Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu has a voice so loud it could strip paint. When on several occasions poor, sick Mimì swooned into his arms he simply bellowed at her (and not always in tune). For a poet, he was rarely poetical in his phrasing, and yet there was a power in his despair at Mimì’s failing health, and at the close his desolation at her loss was devastating.

He is joined in his chilly Parisian attic by some impressive voices, chief among them the Russian baritone Mikhail Timoshenko, also making his Royal Opera debut, as the painter Marcello. There is an intense musicality in this voice and a gift for phrasing that our dogmatic Rodolfo could learn from. It was a delightful performance. Romanian Alexander Köpeczi has a delicious, fathoms-deep bass. His philosopher Colline was a stoic on the surface, but underneath he was greatly moved as Mimì’s life drained away. His aria to his beloved coat, which he sells (too late) to buy her medicine, was one of many highlights. With engaging Korean baritone Hansung Yoo as the vivacious musician Schaunard, they make up an attractive quartet of struggling young artists, bonding a genuine chemistry. Your only worry is for their heads. Designer Stewart Laing’s attic has some lethal roof rafters which they must dodge as they run around in their play-acting. I’m told that several singers have signed their names where they have collided with hard timber in the past. 

Laing’s designs make the most of the contrast between destitute, bohemian Paris and its glittering 19th-century nightlife. The transformation from threadbare attic to a bustling, crowded street scene (complete with enticing lamplit shopping arcades) is hardly instantaneous, but it does give us a moment to appreciate the skills of set builders, stage managers and lighting designers, too often unsung. Revival movement director Danielle Urbas triumphs with the animated chorus, each a character in their own right, out for a good time on Christmas Eve. The carefully-choreographed chaos when the cast move to Café Momus is hilarious, despite the constrictions of Laing’s box set. Cause of all this mayhem is Marcello’s ex-girlfriend, the outrageous Musetta, played and sung with coquettish abandon by Australian soprano Lauren Fagan – until she comes up against sober reality in Mimì’s final moments.

My heart sank at some very slow tempi in the first act from conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, but the natural momentum of Act 2 soon put things on an even keel, with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House strings particularly responsive. Revival director Simon Iorio has brought Jones’ production back to life with real panache, but none of this would work without Puccini’s heart-breaking score. It doesn’t matter how many times you hear it, the tears are never far away. Be warned.