Recenzii de profil
1...philosopher Colline (bass William Thomas, captivating in his final aria)
Recenzii de producție anterioare
7Mimi’s sickbed is the floor of her transit van. Rodolfo sits hunched against a wheel outside, the closest he dare get to his dying lover. Musetta makes her showy arrival in a convertible Merc, and an old ice-cream van serves as the Cafe Momus. Trailer-trash stagings are nothing new – many an old camper van has been rolled on to an operatic stage – but here we’re in a proper car park, this unparalleled season’s venue of choice for high art.
A feature of this La bohème is that some characters come up or down from the stage or roam around the parked cars and indeed Rodolfo’s first entrance is when he cycles back from his part-time job delivering takeaways. He hopes to be a playwright but earns additional money writing newspaper reviews. Home isn’t a Parisian garret but a Volkswagen campervan in a car park much the same as the opera was being performed in. It is surrounded by a couple of others and appears to be part of a commune of some sort peopled by those at the fringes of society.
The production is defined by a feeling of inexorable accumulation and breakthrough, exquisitely soundtracked by the simple modulations and textural transformations of Glass’ score. Ordinary objects – corrugated iron, wicker baskets, paper and cardboard – manifest extraordinary creatures – some grotesque, some beautiful – that teem with awkward life. As a political allegory for how collective action transforms everyday life, it was deeply moving.
As a result, the evening relied more on the fine Marcello and Musetta from Charles Rice and Louise Alder, who gave the tragedy the ring of truth, both revealed and camouflaged by their explosive relationship. Alder took charge of her Café Momus waltz with imperious ease, considerable humour and some impressive coloratura, while in Act Three Rice’s immensely likeable Marcello in fine acting and singing painfully got to the heart of the misery Mimì and Rodolfo are inflicting on each other – they can’t live with or without each other. Rice naturally took charge of the artist household, backed up William Thomas’s Colline and Benson Wilson’s Schaunard, both strongly characterised and sung.
Or maybe not, for one of the most impressive aspects was Ben Glassberg’s conducting, which revelled in Puccini’s Wagnerisms, memories of Tristan evoked quite magically in the first act, without taking for something they were not. The sounds extracted from the ENO Orchestra were often magnificent: a great dynamic range, from moments of hushed intimacy, to grand, declamatory gesture. But it was Glassberg’s pacing and his reconciliation of vocal and orchestral demands that marked this out most strongly. That was not all his doing, of course. Both orchestra and chorus—what a joy to see and hear a chorus, handled most resourcefully, onstage once again—deserved plaudits in their own right. String sheen and incisiveness, bubbling woodwind and chorus: these and more played their part in weaving an effervescent, yet ever-darkening dramatic tapestry.
