The Stage

La Boheme

Published Tuesday 30 June 2009 at 12:20 by David Gutman

With John Copley’s traditional staging still revived regularly at Covent Garden, Elaine Kidd and her team plainly felt they could afford to radicalise Puccini’s sure-fire hit. Dispensing with any specific sense of period, let alone the confined artists’ garret in which Mimi and Rodolfo traditionally fall in love, the wide but shallow performing space at Holland Park is dominated by a huge piece of Marcello’s artwork, blood red and indicative of passions to come. The Cafe Momus is evoked in ingenious fashion with Marcello’s canvas pulled off its scaffolding to reveal, mounted beneath, the cafe’s illuminated sign. While the stage looks over-stuffed in Act II and the scaled-down orchestra is over-driven and over-loud much of the time, the essential dramatic ground is covered effectively and economically.

Linda Richardson, a veteran Mimi whose statuesque look and vibrant tones are not perhaps intended to convey vulnerability, is more professional than affecting until her final illness. Her main difficulty is that she is costumed in unbecoming forties style. In the A cast, Rodolfo and Marcello are taken by Australians, both experienced exponents of these roles, despite their youth. Aldo di Toro, short on power, sings with sincerity. His top notes ring out with clarity, the timbre as vibrantly Italian as the name suggests. Grant Doyle, a recent member of the Royal Opera Young Artists programme, makes a personable Marcello. Hye-Youn Lee, his feisty, scene-stealing Musetta, survives a few squally moments, her characterisation enhanced by her dress, a racy red number. Njabulo Madlala’s Schaunard, less sartorially challenged than his mates, is outshone by Tim Mirfin’s resonant Colline. Odd that he should be the one to sacrifice a beloved old coat when it is Schaunard who has the more remarkable outer garment.

The sense of community is certainly stronger than in bigger budget productions performed indoors, but too few tears are shed.