SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Puccini, La bohème: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of  Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chicago Children's Choir, Sir Andrew Davis (conductor) Lyric Opera Center, Chicago 13.10.2007 (JLZ)

Production:
Stage Director – Renata Scotto

Set and Costume Design - Pier Luigi Pizzi

Lighting - Christine Binder
Chorus Master -  Donald Nally

Cast:
Mimí  - Elaine Alvarez

Musetta – Nicole Cabell

Rodolfo – Roberto Aronica

Marcello – Quinn Kelsey

Colline - Andrea Silvestrelli

Schaunard – Levi Hernandez

Benoit/Alcindoro – Dale Travis

 

Rodolfo – Roberto Aronica  and Mimí  - Elaine Alvarez

Among the delights of the 2007-2008 season of Lyric Opera of Chicago is its exceptional production of Puccini’s La bohème (1897).  With attention to all the details of this familiar opera, this finely cast and well-executed production conveys a sense of excitement to the work. It is, after all, solid theater with excellent music, yet La bohème also requires a highly talented and experienced cast to elicit the strong response that the audience gave on Saturday and throughout this run of performances. As much as La Bohème is a staple of modern opera repertoire, a finely nuanced production like the present one offered by Lyric Opera of Chicago, will remain in memory for years.

From the very first scene, tenor Roberto Aronica set the tone for the performance with his strong and accessible characterization of Rodolfo. Aronica demonstrated both power and expression in the exchanges between his colleagues Marcello and Schaunard in their familiar struggle to make their marks in the world. Painter, poet, musician, and philosopher, they represent the various kinds of Bohemians who habituated nineteenth-century Paris. Yet their personal lives are also a foil for  comic, romantic, and tragic elements with which everyone can identify. The delivery of lines that juxtapose remarks about painting with the temperature of the room must sound facile to be effective, and the performers succeeded well in this regard, forming what seems an almost ideal cast.

As Rodolfo, Aronica became increasingly prominent as the first act progressed, and his delivery conveyed the warmth that one hopes to find in the character.  Yet in the latter part of the act, after Mimí enters, Aronica seemed even more nuanced, as he became infatuated with her. His voice took on the sensitivity that underscored the role and the voice  was colored  effectively, as he worked with Elaine Alvarez. Near the end of the act, with the duet “O soave fanciulla,” their voices merged well into a single sonority that epitomized the text.

As Mimí  Elaine Alvarez was similarly engaging through her singing and persuasive acting. Her vocal tone and body language conveyed the character beautifully, with a fine stage presence that allowed her to work well with Aronica. With Ms Alvarez, the familiar “Mi chiamano Mimi” becomes a kind of confession, a formal aside, in which she defines her character. Without introducing anything unorthodox, it is her phrasing that made the difference, as her clearly articulated vocalizing brought out the subtleties of the libretto. If the decision to have her substitute for Angela Gheorgiu occurred late enough to necessitate the inclusion of an insert in the program, it did not reflect on any kind of last-minute casting. Ms Alvarez has sung the role elsewhere, and in this  production, she offered the fine kind of interpretation that easily meets -  or exceeds - the Chicago Lyris Opera's usual standards.

 

Act II  Principals

The stage set must dominate the second act, and the tableau offered by Lyric’s production is a multidimensional recreation of a Parisian street. The choruses and supernumeraries are part of the elaborate choreography which suggests the Christmas festivities and simultaneously allows the principals to comment on the scene. This was a bustling, lively exploitation of Lyric's stage and chorus that almost deserved applause for stage-management alone. Yet when Musetta enters the scene, her character at once offers a solution to the financial dilemma of the first-act Bohemians and also complicates their lives. This role requires more than comic timin: it must show the romantic leanings that convince Musetta to forego her rich companion Alcindoro (played by Dale Travis) and return to the love that she once shared with Marcello. With her clear, almost effortless soprano voice, Nicole Cabell gave a fine reading of the famous waltz-aria that dominates the act. While addressing all the comic demands of the role, Ms Cabell gave a fine interpretation of the number without any  of the affectations that some singers bring to it.

 

Musetta – Nicole Cabell

Marcello, the painter, must become a catalyst for the lovers in the third act, and Quinn Kelsey did this nicely as his character questioned Mimí  and  Rodolfo about the problems they were having. By rights, Marcello  must come to the fore in this critical part of the drama, and Kelsey did so convincingly. Not only did he serve as a vocal foil, but his stage presence worked commandingly as he  stood between Rodolfo and Mimi before they confronted one another near the end of the act.   In the duet with which the scene ends, Mimí  and Rodolfo are together, and while they state that it will be only until Spring, the staging suggests all of the infatuation with which the first act concluded.

Renata Scotto' s sure hand seems evident with details like this. While the set and costume design for this production of La bohème was part of the 2001-2002 season, Scotto directed this revival, and her sensitivity to this opera is always clear. As the final act recapitulates earlier elements, the sense of Mimi’s impending death  and Rodolfo’s tragedy emerge subtly. In casting such a fine performer as Andrea Silvestrelli in the role of Colline, the overcoat aria, “Addio, vecchia zimarra” becomes the effective metaphor that Puccini intended  as the work proceeds to its dénouement. Once again, it is in attending to details like this that makes this production of La Bohème memorable. And iith a conductor as astute as Sir Andrew Davis in the pit, the result is satisfying on all counts, with the orchestra responding instantly to his attentive leadership. The balance problems that  emerged earlier in the season with La traviata were completely absent in this production, and the enthusiastic fortes  in the second act were lush and never overwhelming. No single element stood out in this well-considered production:  rather, the uniform level of quality and attention to details that audiences have come to expect of Lyric Opera  made this production of Puccini’s familiar work a rewarding evening of music and theater. Exactly as opera should be, in fact.

James L Zychowicz

 

Pictures ©  Dan Rest/ Lyric Opera of Chicago       
                 

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