Written in 1895, originally set in 1830, and in this production updated only to 1947, La Bohème nonetheless retains its contemporary relevance.

Watching a young woman battle an infectious disease in a house where the inhabitants must huddle together for warmth, I was struck by how easily the opera could have been restaged in modern-day New Zealand, with Pacific Island workers in Porirua East dying of rheumatic fever.

Such musings aside, this production begins well, its set dominated by three vast white canvases and a potbellied stove that seems to vent directly into the horizontal windowpane that serves as a roof. [More]

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As we walked to the theatre via Courtenay Place we picked our way through rough sleepers in doorways and on pavements on a very cold night. This handsome production, directed by Bruno Ravella, has chosen postwar Paris 1947 as its defining era – replete with its exceptionally cruel winter. It might, perhaps, have chosen Wellington 2025.

One could expend many words on the central plot of this opera but I’ll settle for impecunious boy (Rodolfo) meets impecunious but uncomplaining girl (Mimi/Lucia) in ‘deprived’ surroundings where dazzling interpersonal flowers grow on a dunghill. They fall in love but split apart because the girl’s health is ebbing away. The boy can’t take it, feeling that some other (rich) guy can look after her better than he can. They reunite as she is dying and reaffirm their love in a room filled by a supportive community of artists who will sell their most precious possessions (clothes even) to buy medicaments for her.

The opera is universally popular and, indeed, much loved. Yet on one occasion it was excoriated for its alleged vacuity by no less a musical figure than Benjamin Britten. I take that as no more than a warning that, handled with less than consummate care, La Boheme might well suffer the fate of Dickens’ Little Nell at the hands of Oscar Wilde.

But this production is a monumental effort in taking care of the fundamental premise and the myriad of onstage details that go with that. This international team has done the piece proud through its obvious forethought and pleasing presentation. There is an overall seamlessness and not even a hint of succumbing to sentimentality. Puccini pioneered verismo (kitchen sink format – well ahead of its time) while NZ Opera, in its turn, has been true to that aim.

The first Act gives us Puccini in all his unvarnished realism but with examples of his renowned playfulness. (At times the music and the action combined distantly resemble a 1940s Disney animation). The young artists not only burn Rodolfo’s poetic work for a quick burst of warmth they accord it a serious round of reviews; concluding that the work was a bit thin. More realism shows up in the shape of the landlord looking for the rent. He is despatched by his four tenants with a degree of low cunning laced with elements of outrageous blackmail – and liquor. A bit glib but we get the point.

Left alone as the others (with provocatively empty pockets) head to an upmarket cabaret. This paves way for one of the most beautiful (and unlikely) meetings of human hearts and minds in all opera. It is expertly handled with no hint of cliche.

Mimi stumbles in asking for no more help than a light for her candle. In the dark, on the floor with only moonlight through the window: cold hand meets frozen hand. A key is found. Love is born.

Ji-Min Park’s Rodolfo has both acute tenderness and amazing vocal power. Elena Perronis’ Mimi is all vulnerability, but eschewing any thought of self-pity. This scene resonates though the entire work. The aria “Che gelina manina” is a staple of sopranos’ repertoires. In its sharp context it readily brings tears to the eye.

It also offers a huge visual opportunity in that the set is bounded back and sides by the giant screens that bear images through the story that reflect the emotional state of play; from initial optimism to passing despair. The images that appear above this iconic scene are uplifting yet are entirely in sync with the seemingly abject scene below. That experience alone is worth the admission price. The creative design teams under Tiziano Santi and Paul Jackson are to be lauded for their many insights. Plot and character are both elucidated by the set and lighting ideas.

[Andi Crown Photography]

No matter what happens later in the story, Mimi and Rodolfo are fused forever as one. You/we will believe in them.

In Act two we are over at the club to where the lads have decamped. We go from the sublime to the manipulative. We meet, in an opulent and overpriced setting sharply contrasting with the rundown lodgings of Rodolfo, one Musetta (Emma Pearson). She’s an in-yer-face and well-practised courtesan, who is currently on-and-off schmoozing and teasing the young painter Marcello  (Samuel Dundas) while indirectly draining the wallet of some fading fool named Alcindoro (Robert Tucker). The drama queen skulduggery she gets up to in sticking Alcindoro with a monstrous bill for both her and the lads is honours standard. She provides the mirror image of Mimi. Along the way her gem of an aria “Quando m’en vo” (Musetta’s Waltz) is well received. The lighting change when the rich guy gets the bill is one for the ages. It proves that words aren’t everything.

Acts three and four confront the fact that all the love shown in the first two acts are put to a withering test as the severely damaged Mimi searches for Rodolfo via Marcello in pitiless and (seemingly) real snow. This is where the emotional carriage could easily become detached by drifting into crude melodrama. Messrs Tucker and Park maintain credibility and dramatic steadfastness as Mimi overhears her true lover’s threat of abandonment on questionable (albeit plausible) grounds. Marcello even cops a feminist serve from a departing Musetta.

What went before was about living. From Act 2 it is all about dying. This opera has no standard villain. Just constant snow, chronic illness and a depleted social structure to fight against.

Musetta, Rodolfo and the lads are faced with a dying heroine in Rodolfo’s flat  (one who was content just to embroider flowers and to love Rodolfo). Much of the time is then spent  without rancour reminiscing about what we saw at the start and is still vivid in our minds. In that fateful room there is musical and dramatic richness to be found in well-judged succinctness.

A nearly full St James reacts with warmth and measured appreciation. There are no scenes of cultivated hype. Their satisfaction is brought about by a massive team effort that makes all the right production choices and delivers a sound product. There are no weak links onstage or off.

Much of the action takes place on Christmas Eve so there is a fine chorus of children whose costumes are integral to a joyous mood at various places within the action. At other times, downbeat things are happening and the costumes reflect that. Gabrielle Dalton is the author. She is to be generously thanked. Her finished work is a triumph of research and application.

The 60-piece (or so) orchestra has many demands placed on it. Puccini wrote in such a way that the onstage characters live within the confines of the incidental music and are somewhat shaped by it. The music must roll out bang on cue along with the lighting. It makes for a busy and highly focused two hours. Dionysis Grammenos ensures that his musicians play their score accurately and with a good sound balance (vis a vis the onstage voices) that is excellent throughout.

Operas are not cheap to go to. That reflects the enormous ‘back office’ that determines what the audience will ultimately see. It dictates the philosophy, look and feel of the production. When it all comes off with innovative zeal and style, as here, it provides unique memories to last a lifetime and that probably run out at about $3 a year. Huge value for money.

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From his very first phrase, Questo Mar Rosso mi ammollisce, tenor Ji-Min Park powers the character of Rodolfo to the forefront of this stylish production with Italianate resonance and unerring vocal control. It is a role in which he is well-practiced, and his puissance persists whether he is kneeling, sitting or standing, a most impressive New Zealand debut. The rest of the cast give polished and accomplished performances. 

The hallmark of this production is minimalism, with the brakes gently applied to any emotive outpourings. For some, this cool style might fall short of the engagement anticipated from what is usually a real tear-jerker. 

It is easy to sense the continuity of the dynamic opera environment of the nineteenth century in which Puccini forged La bohème. Verdi himself might have sensed that Puccini represented a more “marketable” opera style than his own masterful and intense creations; a sharing platter of melodies rather than the heavily styled, heroically structured main courses represented by his Tosca, for example. Verdi said of Puccini, “the symphonic element appears to be predominant in him” and, more bluntly put, with Puccini no kitchen sink is spared; when it comes to lush emotion the marketing-savvy Puccini is the master.  

The entry of the children in Act 2, the café scene, goads a reviewer who might have hitherto avoided the V word to discuss the P word. The music-box melody of the children entering the church in Tosca (the T word) reminds me of the cheery crowd chorus around Parpignol as he conjures his way across the La bohème (the B word) marketplace. 

Director Bruno Ravella notes the efficiency of the Bohème story, and the music is similarly taut – the obvious example being the introduction to Act 2, simply two bumping chords then curtain up. Brad Cohen conducts the APO, as he did for Verdi’s Macbeth, with the usual superb performance from the pit.  

Few opera stories take us along for such a compellingly empathetic and easily comprehended ride. Gone the grandeur, eschewed the emperors, forgotten the fairies, fops and pharaohs. Enter the artists of this “verismo” period of realism, the bohemians whose world revolves not around assets or shares, but humanity and ingenuity, their hand-to-mouth daily existence undoubtedly reverberating for many in New Zealand today. You could be forgiven for thinking of Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge, or, with this minimalism, the Broadway musical Rent.  

As director Bruno Ravella says, “there are moments in the piece where you either want to cry or laugh”. This man must have a thread of Puccini within him. He directed the historic Teatro del Giglio production in Puccini’s Tuscany hometown in 2019 – also designed by Santi who has a long international career in stage and cinema design – and they also collaborated in productions for the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics, pointedly the very city where Puccini’s Bohème premiere took place in 1896, conducted by Toscanini. Suffice to say Ravella is clearly a Puccini groupie – and internationally busy.  

Paris around 1830, the original setting, has been slid forward to 1947, just after World War 2. The city itself is a character in the opera, says Ravella, and he emphasises this with an abstracted map of Paris city as a backdrop in Act 3. There’s a sense of optimism and future-forging despite the scars on society. Fashions have outlived rations, and Dior glamour has survived the deprivation and devastation. Now it must succumb to the 21^st century budget constraints that costume designer Gabrielle Dalton has to work within. Musetta’s bright red cinched and belted-waist dress echoes the flare of Emma Pearson’s wicked delivery as Musetta. I can now appreciate why the talented Auckland-based soprano was the cover for Orla Boylan in the title role in NZO’s Tosca and recall how she impressed in the title role of their production of Semele at Holy Trinity Cathedral. More Emma, please! 

Tiziano Santi’s recent Bohème set for director Ravella at Teatro Maggio Musicale in Florence gained applause and here he employs the same minimal, suggestive approach, the sparseness of which does not add the usual frisson of emotion that can sweep the audience away with this tragic story. “Fragments of theatre, as Ravella puts it. Santi’s most successful scene is the attic, where cool light through a mucky, suspended garret window mixes with blue-cast side lighting to convey the poverty and discomfort of the artists. Their floor is itself a canvas, dog-eared and attached to orange ropes ascending to the flies, leading us to wonder if the whole scene, stove and all, might be hauled skywards at any point – which, of course, it is not. 

Australian Paul Jackson’s lighting keeps the colour temperature high, in the blue spectrum, and does little to emphasise the Dior/Ricci post-war quest for colour of which Musetta’s belted red dress and Mimi’s bright blue frock remind us. His starry-sky projections around the attic do lift the aspirations of the otherwise unspectacular set, and he does allow himself some warm tones as the artists return to their attic in the final act. 

The daring genius of Puccini resonates even more strikingly than the bells of Rome in this work, but with the verismo realism, as this sleek prediction reminds us, it is not always about inflated drama – while Puccini’s contemporaries continued to build whole scenes around the prolonged death throes of their heroines (usually the soprano) he actually has a diva die unnoticed in the background, although this version keeps the anguish of grief well contained. Death where is thy sing! 

The role of pallid seamstress Mimi is taken by Elena Perroni, whom we recall as Gilda in last year’s Rigoletto. It is her famously cold little hand that Rodolfo observes at their first meeting. Like Edith Piaf, she brings to mind a sparrow, and the director has cast her a a rag doll as she first falls through the door into the garret. Her aria, ‘Sì, mi chiamano Mimì’ (‘Yes, they call me Mìmi’) is a true classic, and Miss Perroni summons wonderful vocal force from a tiny frame.  

As Schaunard, Mina Foley artist baritone Benson Wilson has his mainstage NZ Opera debut. His recent performance of a Mahler lieder with the APO was strikingly beautiful and he brings a flowing artistry to this role. Australian opera stalwart Samuel Dundas is Marcello. Nga Kaiwhakaari (the cast) also includes original “barihunk” Hadleigh Adams who has put in real hard yards overseas and sings as the final member of the bohemian quartet, Colline. His sense of mischievous humour is a charmer on this opening night, while in the dual roles of landlord Benôit and Musetta’s “patron” Alcindoro, Robert Tucker also gives us some humorous relief.  

Most of the “four bros” have sung other of the flatmate roles, and the director has paid attention in character development to differentiate them. Their mateship, despite the playful interludes, is fettered by the same sangfroid that keeps full emotional engagement at bay – perhaps it is the first-night tenuousness of a new production. 

A hearty Freemasons’ Auckland Chorus of more than thirty delivers in spades, although their cohesion and camaraderie is not abetted by the two-line ration queue leading into the Café Momus scene. Similarly, the director has constrained the children and the toy seller Parpignol mostly to a small area of the stage. In the latter cameo, it is welcome to see tenor and actor Chris McRae living the dream in his first named NZ Opera role, albeit a tiny one, as the nimble clown. 

The paring down has also been applied to the start of Act 3 at La Barriera d’Enfer where the customs officers warming themselves by the brazier outside a tavern has now become a single, more cold-resistant gendarme. The scene leads up to the quartet of Marcello and Musetta, Mimi and Rodolfo which is faithfully performed and has hilarious, updated surtitles (“bitch, bastard, hag”), but lacks a certain fire. 

Finally, the edges of the canvas floor curl up slightly, and like the pervasive dry ice, dry eyes take us to the curtain falling on a cooly styled, very tidy, intelligent production. 

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