La boheme

Synopsis

Puccini's most enduring opera. The story of the love of the poor poet Rodolfo for the consumptive seamstress Mimi. Set in the Latin Quarter of Paris the course of their love is constantly threatened by Rodolfo's jealousy and Mimi's illness. The painter Marcello and the provocative Musetta are the other main characters. This is where 'your tiny hand is frozen' comes from and the last few bars, as Rodolfo realises Mimi is dead, are some of opera's most moving moments.

Our Review:

15 January 2010

Phyllida Lloyd’s production of La Boheme, now astonishingly nearly 17 years old, is the sort of thing that gives updating a good name. The 1950s was a pretty good time for Bohemians and much more familiar to us than Henry Murger’s world of the mid-19th century. Lloyd’s production is so convincing that you half-expect to find Juliette Greco appear from the shadows. Witty details abound, such as the succession of Warhol-like identical images of Musetta that signify Marcello’s continuing devotion.

As revived by Peter Relton, the production in Anthony Ward’s inventive designs fully exploits the individual character of each scene. Act 2 in the Café Momus is a master-stroke of brilliantly simple staging, with the scene defined and re-defined by the movements of a monster banquette, a disciplined but uninhibited children’s chorus and Paul Rendall’s Parpignol, the toy-seller, doing his best to steal the show. But Act 3, omi...

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