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Puccini, La Bohème : Soloists, chorus and orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Conductor: Christian Badea. Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 13.7.2008. (JPr)

Roberto Aronica as Rodolfo and Cristina Gallardo-Domas as Mimì

At the end of the matinee performance the ovations died away and the house lights went up and a voice behind me said to her companion ‘I finally get to La bohème at Covent Garden and the tenor is on crutches!’ This wasn’t quite the story but more of this later.

This opera was Puccini’s fourth for the stage. It was produced at Turin in 1896, and was not an instant hit with the critics. The next year the Carl Rosa Company presented it in English at Manchester, and a few months later at Covent Garden. On 30 June 1899 it was sung at Covent Garden in Italian and became a staple of the repertory, surviving two World Wars until it was replaced in 1974 by the current John Copley production.

The librettists’ source material was Murger’s novel Scènes de la vie de Bohème and they selected four of the characteristic episodes and imbued them with the spirit of the original. Although set in Paris about 1820, the story is a timeless one with considerable contemporary resonances. Far too many people believe that a composer’s output evolves in isolation from their personal life and the world in which he or she lives, but this certainly was not the case for Puccini as recent research continues to confirm. He is yet another composer whose masterpieces are often biographical in nature and here in La bohème there is the reminiscence of Puccini’s own student days, sharing a room in Milan with Mascagni, and probably recalling something about lost love too. Indeed his graduation exercise from the Milan Conservatoire, Capriccio sinfonico, is the first music we hear as the curtain rises for La bohème.

Certain elements of Puccini’s musical style help to confirm La bohème as the ‘masterpiece’ it genuinely is. Puccini appears more open to the concept of symphonic development of the German masters than other Italian opera composers (Verdi especially). Based on this idea, Act II has been considered the ‘scherzo’ and Act III the ‘slow movement’. There is a greater sense of La bohème and his other operas being ‘through-composed’ just as one might hear in a movement from a symphony. We know only too well that certain Puccini arias and ensembles can be taken out of their original context and performed on their own, yet the opera's in full contain  very little sense of having  ‘numbers’, as are found in Verdi’s operas up to Otello and Falstaff. Perhaps more importantly,  Puccini used something called 'thematic reminiscence' that is not far removed from Wagner’s leitmotifs. Here in La bohème, there are themes associated with the Bohemians and with Mimì, among others.

Matthew Rose as Colline, Roderick Williams as Schaunard, Jeremy White as Benoit,
 Roberto Aronica as Rodolfo and Franco Vassallo as Marcello

The success of John Copley’s staging, here in its twenty-first revival, lies in a sense of cinematic-style realism involving cast, chorus and extras (totalling 100 or so in Act II). There was meticulous research behind the late Julia Trevelyan Oman’s ultra-faithful designs and, as a eulogising programme note declares, ‘The doors in La bohème work’! It is a ‘jolly good show’, is a sell-out every time it is put on and is not ready to be pensioned off yet, indeed it will return (with the same conductor) this October to celebrate John Copley’s sixtieth anniversary of working for The Royal Opera.

This has been a difficult season for the Royal Opera with many cancellations and much illness disrupting plans of many years standing and even now, with so few performances remaining, they were not to get off Scot-free. It was announced that the Italian tenor Roberto Aronica had badly injured a knee, was in ‘considerable pain’ and would use a stick. This had meant extra rehearsals with the principal cast to adjust the staging accordingly. The tenor could not manage the stairs so Mimì entered at the front of stage-left in Act I and there was quite a lot of fussing with chairs so that he could sit down as often as possible. This meant that the ‘horse-play’ amongst the Bohemians did not seem quite as interminable as it can, particularly in Act IV, and overall there was a spontaneity to events that you do not expect for a twenty-first revival. I have seen this production a dozen or more times over the years and this was the freshest it has been for a long time,  due to a combination of the presence of the original director and the tenor’s adversity.

Roberto Aronica has a full-throated tenor voice with an effortlessly secure high C. His acting skills were a little difficult to assess in the circumstances but he seems one of the more relaxed and natural actors of this generation of tenors. He has a broad smile, bushy black beard and full head of hair (a wig?) that along with his infirmity was all too reminiscent of both the  sadly missed Luciano Pavarotti. The sound is similar to his, too, in the upper echelons of the voice, but there was also a noticeable gear change at times and his voice was sometimes reminiscent of his mentor Carlo Bergonzi. His Mimì was the Chilean, Cristina Gallardo-Domas, and she gave us a sense of the character’s great anxiety as to what life has in store for her, while the delicacy and insecurity of her voice matched her characterisation, although it might seem more suited for Cio-Cio-San.

Both Aronica and Gallardo-Domas could sound somewhat stentorian at times, but they brought great tenderness to their ‘Addio, dolce svegliare’ in Act III. This was especially luminous because of the revised production.

Donald Maxwell as Alcindoro and Nicole Cabell as Musetta

Clearly in these circumstances the dramatic heart of the work shifted to the Marcello-Musetta relationship from Act II. Her coquettishness and his jealousy gives way to their reconciliation in Act IV. American soprano Nicole Cabell revealed great comic timing and after an uncertain start with apparent intonation problems, vocally went from strength to strength during and after her ‘Quando m’en vo’.

Making his debut with the Royal Opera, the Italian baritone Franco Vassallo is an interesting discovery, his voice full of insouciance and charm that reminded me of  the young Thomas Allen whom I saw in this role during the 1980s.

For once, home-grown talent was on stage in strength. Roderick Williams was a supremely confident Schaunard with an elegant baritonal voice, and in the imposing physique and bass voice of former Young Artist Matthew Rose as Colline,  ‘Vecchia zimarra, senti’ that strange farewell to his coat in Act IV has rarely before had so much heartfelt resonance. Surely he will eventually sing Marke in Tristan und Isolde as his voice is ideal for it. Last but not least in this wonderful ensemble were the masterly vignettes from stalwarts Jeremy White as the lascivious Benoit and Donald Maxwell as the cuckolded Alcindoro.

There was some elegant playing, as is to be expected, from the Royal Opera House orchestra under Christian Badea, who was returning to a production he conducted in 1996. There was suitable attack from the strings, bright brass and sweet-toned woodwind. That there was some indulgence in the tempi when it came to his Rodolfo particularly - and occasionally for Mimì - is understandable in the circumstances, as was his inability always to  balance  the sound from stage and pit sufficiently. There were nevertheless so many wonderful moments, particularly from the moment Rodolfo and Mimì are alone at last in Act IV through to the very sad end, that any other doubts could be forgiven and forgotten. The audience, pace the one lone voice bemoaning her lot, seemed satisfied as always, and so was I.

Jim Pritchard

Pictures © Catherine Ashmore

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