On stage, the revival director, Dan Dooner, had to keep his principal singers safe, both in rehearsal and in performance, by reducing contact to a minimum – just the occasional arm around the shoulders or brief embrace between Mimi and Rodolfo.Act One, in which Mimi and Rodolfo meet and fall in love, and Act Four, when Mimi returns to die in Rodolfo’s arms, are the most successful in...
Pared-down Puccini: The Royal Opera's La bohème gains new urgency
As the famously flirty coquette, Danielle de Niese steals the show with her antics in Café Momus, drunkenly climbing on tables and flashing her panties. While de Niese may not be the most vocally glamorous Musetta, she nicely charts the character’s development from outrageous party girl to concerned friend. Her post-breakup walk offstage at the end of Act 3 is particularly memorable ...
La bohème at Royal Opera House review: a potent, unsentimental but Covid-struck staging
The students’ horseplay in the final act involves the daubing of multi-mammary graffiti on the walls of the garret. That and the stark lighting make for an alienating backdrop when the dying Mimi is helped in. Yet the staging ultimately achieves poignancy in its own terms when the casting of deep shadows almost obscures the graffiti, highlighting the pallor of Mimi’s face into the ba...