LA
BOHEME
Welsh
National Opera at Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff *****
Though originally seen 12 years ago, this WNO production of
Puccini’s most heart-breaking opera maintains a freshness and capacity to
enthral which kicks so many routine run-throughs of this repertoire staple into
touch.
Director Caroline Chaney has allowed this masterpiece to
speak its own language, uncluttered by director’s gimmicks – nor slick
updatings. Stephen Brimson Lewis’ economical but telling designs set us firmly
in the Paris of the 1830’s Tim Mitchell’s lighting creates an atmosphere in
which radiant warmth briefly dispels bleak chills, and Nina Dunn’s video design
brings starlight, migrating birds – and someone has also brought about the
smoking chimneys of Paris as the four student friends gaze down from their
garret across the rooftops.
Chaney has inserted so many telling details: Mimi and Rodolfo
cosying up so intimately in a corner of the Café Momus, before she cowers alone
there, racked by coughing; another, most poignantly, is the musician Schaunard
mixing Mimi’s useless medicine, taking it to her in a chipped mug, and being
the first to discover she has died.
We have three acts of poignant intimacy, and one, the
second, of glitter and bustle. In this scene at the Café Momus we have busy
choral activity, strident interjections from the children, and an onstage marching
band (just disappointing that the clown toy-seller Parpignol doesn’t bring any
actual toys – why not just shovel in a stall?).
It is here on Christmas Eve that all the relationships are
forged, eventually to show their strengths as Mimi passes away in the
comfortless garret. And this cast is such a wonderful team, headed by the sassy
but frail Mimi of Elin Pritchard, the owlishly endearing Rodolfo of Jung Soo Yun),
the tormented, helpless Marcello (actually, possibly the main character – read the
Murger source, Scenes de la Vie de Boheme) of German E Alcantara, and Aofie
Miskelly’s many-sided Musetta, an imperious courtesan melting into a penitent
sinner who prays for Mimi’s recovery.
All of this is marshalled so flowingly by Pietro Rizzi,
conducting the remarkable WNO Orchestra, rich in tone, responsive in detail.
*At Birmingham Hippodrome November 9, 10, 11 (7.15pm).
Box Office 0844 338 5000
Ends
THE
MAKROPOULOS AFFAIR
Welsh
National Opera at Wales Millennium Centre ***
We begin as though in Charles Dicken’s Jarndyce and Jarndyce
in Bleak House, with an endlessly protracted probate suit. We end with a
mysterious woman revealing all the answers, as during the 337 years of her
potion-prolonged life she has slept with all the men involved and produced
their children.
This is the gist of Janacek’s penultimate opera, and it presents
the director with tempting opportunities. Do we show her, currently the starry
opera-singer Emilia Marty, as revelling in her colourful past, or do we portray
her as a classy, tormented lady with an elegant disdain for whatever has gone
on before?
Many decades ago it was my privilege to review David
Pountney’s production of the opera for WNO, with the unsurpassable Elisabeth
Soderstrom as the protagonist. Here was class indeed. Olivia Fuchs concept for
this new WNO presentation has turned it into something very different.
The audience is encouraged to laugh at the bumbling
interventions of the charismatic Emilia’s many suitors. They are indeed
encouraged to laugh in embarrassment at the many gratuitous rough sex episodes
(and there were so many children in the audience here); I could go in for
graphic detail, but am remembering instead the restraint of WNO’s previous
staging.
This current production is skewed. For two acts it lurches
towards bawdy farce, and the opening of the third act continues the
belly-laughs. Then suddenly it realises the tragic stature of the piece, when
Emilia accepts that she is at last dying, and bids farewell to all those around
her with the wisdom acquired from centuries of experience.
Angela Blancas Giulin is an amazing Emilia, flapperly Louise
Brooks-like in Act One’s cluttered lawyer’s office, brassy in her post-opera performance
Act Two, manic and then so heroic in Act Three. We marvelled at how well her
voice stood up under so much belting pressure. As her latest infatuation, Nicky
Spence was a sterling Albert Gregor, ringing of tone, his body-language
displaying frustrated despair with every movement.
WNO music director Tomas Hanus conducted the wonderful WNO Orchestra
in his own edition of the score (one wonders what the editorial problems are?),
and their response was glowing and affirmative, supplemented by the offstage
brass reminding us so much of Janacek’s contemporaneous Sinfonietta.
*Birmingham Hippodrome November 8 (7.15 pm).
Details on 0844 338 5000
Christopher Morley
ends