PUCCINI La Bohème

Stefan Herheim’s concept Bohème on DVD from Oslo

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Giacomo Puccini

Genre:

Opera

Label: Electric Pictures

Media Format: Digital Versatile Disc

Media Runtime: 127

Mastering:

Stereo
DDD

Catalogue Number: EPC01DVD

PUCCINI boheme oslo

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
(La) Bohème, 'Bohemian Life' Giacomo Puccini, Composer
Diego Torre, Rodolfo, Tenor
Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Conductor
Espen Langvik, Schaunard, Baritone
Giacomo Puccini, Composer
Giovanni Battista Parodi, Colline, Bass
Jennifer Rowley, Musetta, Soprano
Marita Solberg, Mimi, Soprano
Norwegian National Opera Children's Chorus
Norwegian National Opera Chorus
Norwegian National Opera Orchestra
Svein Erik Sagbråten, Benoit; Parpignol; Alcindoro; Toll Gate Keeper; Death
Vasily Ladjuk, Marcello, Baritone
Death is so frequently used as a dramatic device in Italian opera that the biggest shock a Puccini production can offer a modern audience is to make it real, to make it more than an obligatory dramatic incident. That’s just what happens in Stefan Herheim’s truly singular La bohème – before the first music is heard. The setting is a modern hospital ward. Mimì is bald (presumably from medical treatment) and her electrocardiogram is projected on to the walls of the opera’s set. She stops breathing; the doctors rush but can’t save her. When Mimì’s death comes at the end of the opera, the addition of Puccini’s music to this setting is devastating, perhaps in all the ways that the composer hoped for.

The opera proper inhabits grey zones between memory, fantasy and real life, with the characters dressed as Paris bohemians from the time of the opera’s premiere (1896), though the setting drifts back into the hospital periodically, most memorably in Act 1: after her entrance, Mimì sheds her wig and dress and prepares to die. Then Rodolfo’s aria brings her back to life. So when she sings about the arrival of spring in her own aria, it’s emotionally charged in ways that such over-exposed music rarely is. Some directorial touches are brutal, such as when Mimì collapses at Café Momus and is jeered by passing children. Some are devilishly funny, such as in Act 3 when Musetta emerges from an operating table after cosmetic surgery.

Most brilliant is Mimì’s Act 4 death scene. If you want to be surprised, stop reading here: her final sung words of consolation come from her already-departed spirit as her bald double lies increasingly lifeless in the hospital bed. Her ghost guides Musetta’s hand towards Marcello’s. Elsewhere, though, I could do without a recurring demonic character – an ETA Hoffmann type who represents death and underscores the obvious.

High-concept productions often demand musical distensions but, when heard and not seen, this La bohème is a vital, middle-of-the-road reading, full of discipline and integrity, thanks, no doubt, to conductor Eivind Gullberg Jensen. The cast’s singing is clearly invigorated by these fresh staging ideas. And though these voices might not dislodge memories of Jussi Björling or Renata Tebaldi, they’re all absolutely first-class. Tenor Diego Torre has a wonderfully robust high C; soprano Marita Sølberg is as stylistically Italianate as any Mimì I’ve ever heard. Don’t schedule any social engagements after watching this. You might not be in any shape to keep them.

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