The Canadian ‘three musketeers’ of opera have returned to Glasgow, reviving their 2017 La bohème for Scottish Opera. Renaud Doucet and Andre Barbe’s detailed stage direction clever set and beautiful costume design were strikingly lit by their collaborator and friend Guy Simard, this show marking his retirement after many years with the creative team. While stage lighting has changed enormously over time, Simard claims that there are gaps the new technology cannot manage, but new or old school, this production looked fabulous, Simard’s busy lighting plot integral to understanding this time-shifting production.
Barbe and Doucet set the opera in 1925 when Paris was a magnet for the Lost Generation of artists, the emerging Jazz Age and the Art Deco movement, the city’s recovery from the Great War a mirror of the Paris of author Henri Murger’s tale of bohemian counter-culture in the 1850s. Barbe and Ducet picture an unwell tourist woman in the present-day Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen, Paris’ largest flea market, touching the antique objects and imagining herself as Mimì in a freezing garret. The curtain rises in the present day, an accordion plays, a singer busks songs to the milling crowd who take selfies while bored children study mobile phones. The tourist puts a record on a vintage phonograph – it’s La bohème – and the music is seamlessly taken up by the orchestra as we time-travel back.
The fixed sepia Parisian street morphs cleverly from the chilly loft, through the streets of Café Momus (here renamed Art Deco), shadowy winter city gateways and back to the garret in summer, all packed with detail and framed at the rear by a large franked airmail letter highlighting the memory-play. Costumes are subdued 1920s period, generally earthy hues with the bohemians sporting stronger coloured jackets.
Hye-Youn Lee also returns as Mimì, balancing her fragility with a noble inner strength, her soprano especially radiant in Act 3 as the degree of her desperation becomes apparent. She was not quite vocally matched by Mario Chang’s love-struck Rodolfo, a strong tenor who opened out powerfully at times but was occasionally overwhelmed by the orchestra particularly when he was at the rear of the set. Roland Wood captured Marcello’s avuncular mercurial character perfectly, his rich baritone bringing authority to this pivotal role. Callum Thorpe’s Colline and Edward Jowle’s Schaunard blended their voices as they capered playfully in the ensemble passages, Thorpe studiously serious in his solemn Coat Aria.
The central café scene was packed with detail, Barbe and Doucet selectively freezing vignettes, Simard’s lighting guiding the audience to the story. Renowned for its complexity with a large Christmas Eve crowd, children’s chorus and onstage band, this was a delightful whirl of humanity, Susanna Wapshott’s choruses thrillingly vibrant and pinpoint accurate. As the four artistic friends get to know Mimì and josh playfully, this is Musetta’s showpiece, Rhian Lois saucily boisterous, delivering her big aria standing atop a carousel horse, exotically trailing a cheetah on wheels and causing a magnificent rumpus as she and Marcello rekindle their fragile relationship. Movement direction was sharp with every person a character, Parpignol’s colourful toy-seller, outsize carnival masks and festoon lighting adding to the cavalcade atmosphere.
This revival flowed better than I remembered, Stuart Stratford in the pit maintaining crisp momentum whilst highlighting the lush score’s detail, occasional exuberance forgiven in relishing the big moments where the singers had to work hard. This opera attracts new audiences who, without the programme note, may well have been baffled by the intermingling references to the present day, including a policeman shifting a tramp off the street and a prostitute on her mobile in Act 3. The audience also had to be alert to catch fast-moving details. I enjoyed the indefatigable Jamie MacDougall’s excellent doubling as Benoît, the shifty landlord, and Alcindoro, Musetta’s admirer landed with the café bill. Djorje Gajic’s accordion interlude in front of the stage cloth to cover the final scene change was a lovely touch, and I won’t spoil the surprise at the end.
La bohème may be a sentimental tale, but Barbe and Doucet play up the humour and vitality of the bohemian camaraderie to make it a crowd-pleaser of a fine show, which should do well as it tours Scotland.
