United Kingdom Puccini, La bohème: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House / Kevin John Edusei (conductor). Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, 14.10.2022. (CSa)

Production:
Director – Richard Jones
Revival director – Danielle Urbas
Designer – Stewart Laing
Lighting designer – Mimi Jordan Sherin
Movement director – Sarah Fahie
Chorus director – William Spaulding
Cast:
Marcello – Andrey Zhilikhovsky
Rodolfo – Juan Diego Flórez
Colline – Michael Mofidian
Schaunard – Ross Ramgobin
Benoît – Jeremy White
Mimì – Ailyn Pérez
Parpignol – Andrew Macnair
Musetta – Danielle de Niese
Alcindoro – Wyn Pencarreg
Customs Officer – John Morrissey
Sergeant – Thomas Barnard
The winter fuel crisis, a rise in the poverty rate, and a recently reported resurgence of tuberculosis in the UK, gave the Royal Opera House’s most recent revival of Puccini’s La bohème an unexpected topicality. Richard Jones’s 2017 production is still as musically accomplished and visually fresh as it was back then, yet the familiar tale of four bohemians struggling to heat themselves in a freezing Paris garret, and a chance encounter with a consumptive young woman called Mimì, has a new and surprisingly contemporary resonance.
Gently falling snowflakes against a pitch-black backdrop and a Caillebotte inspired, chimney-stacked roofscape, evoke a cold Christmas Eve in the Latin Quarter. A starkly lit white beamed attic – more suggestive of Shaker New England than Louis-Napoléon’s Old Paris – rolls slowly forward, thrusting the principals to the front of the stage. The poet Rodolfo, ardently sung by the sweetly lyrical Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez, sacrifices the manuscript of the play he is writing to light the stove, while the boisterous painter Marcello – stentorian-voiced Moldovan baritone, Andrey Zhilikhovsky — complains of the bitter cold. The quartet is soon completed with the arrival of Colline the philosopher (the young and powerful bass-baritone Michael Mofidian) and Schaunard, a tousle-haired artist, played by baritone Ross Ramgobin. In addition to bread, wine, and some much-needed wood, he brings some fine comic timing to the party. The decision by Rodolfo’s mates to continue their laddish celebrations at Café Momus leaves Rodolfo alone. In a dramatic shift of mood, he encounters and falls desperately and immediately in love with the dying Mimì. Mimì, flickering candle in icy hand, is tenderly portrayed by Ailyn Pérez, a soprano possessed of a gorgeous, honeyed voice. Rodolfo’s famous introductory first act aria ‘Che gelida manina’ was beautifully realised and Mimì’s response, ‘Mi chiamano Mimì’, understated, yet exquisitely performed. The two singers established a perfect balance in their soaring duet ‘O soave fanciulla’, and there was no doubt that these great artists worked wonderfully well together.
That said, Flórez excels in the lighter, smaller soundworlds of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. His silver voice and impeccable technique are perhaps not best suited to the orchestral demands of Puccini performed live, nor, in this production, big enough to cope with the challenges of the Royal Opera House auditorium.

Designer Stewart Laing brilliantly depicts Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s Paris in Act II: a riot of colour and sound, in which a marching band, groups of animated school children, shoppers and street vendors crowd the elegant arcades and mill around the streetlamps of the Latin Quarter. The gilded fin-de-siècle Café Momus is conjured up in a silent shift of scenery. Here we first encounter the spirited Musetta (soprano Danielle de Niese). She is in top form as the red-frocked reveller who stands on a restaurant table and taunts her ex-boyfriend Marcello by removing her knickers.
Grim reality returns in the third act. The falling snow, which in the first act was as pretty as a Christmas card, has become an unrelenting reminder of deep winter. We find ourselves on the outskirts of the city in the grey light of dawn, outside a tavern at the Barrière d’Enfer. The moment when Mimì agrees to part from Rodolfo (‘Donde lieta usci … Addio, senza rancor’) touched the heart, and the quartet, which combines their final farewell with a jealous row between Marcello and Musetta, was convincingly portrayed.
The final act of La bohème plays out in the now familiar ice-cold attic. In one of the most powerful and moving denouements in all opera, Puccini’s lush and vibrant score, in the hands of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and under the baton of Kevin John Edusei, takes on an almost cinematic urgency; the music itself seems to sob. Musetta, who has discovered the dying Mimì at the foot of the stairs, is transformed from coquette to carer, while the rowdy exuberance of the artists gives way to sad resignation. The aria ‘Vecchia zimarra, senti’ sung as Colline prepares to pawn his overcoat, was magnificently resonant, and Rodolfo’s overwhelming grief, fervently conveyed.
La bohème is arguably Puccini’s greatest and most enduring opera, and 2022 has seen a number of good productions. Musically, dramatically, and visually, this one is an excellent and timely addition. And today, more than ever, it is compellingly relevant.
Chris Sallon