LA BOHEME

 

La Boheme. 

Composed by Giacomo Puccini. Librettists Guiseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. Conductor Simon Bruckard. Director Dean Bryant. Set and costume designer Isabel Hudson. Lighting designer Damien Cooper. Revival director Warwick Doddrell. Intimacy coordinator Chloe Dallimore AM.  Opera Australia. National Tour 2025. Canberra Theatre. Canberra Theatre Centre. July 17-19 2025. Bookings: 62752700 or canberratheatrecentre,com.au.

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

 

The cast of La Boheme at Momus Cafe

Opera Australia returns in triumph to the Canberra Theatre with a fresh and luminescent production of Giacomo Puccini’s much loved La Boheme. This national touring production accompanied by a brilliant touring orchestra breathes new life into Puccini’s opera about the lives and loves of a group of Bohemians in nineteenth century Paris. Director Dean Bryant has updated the opera to the Nineteen Seventies in a production full of flair and vitality.  Puccini’s score transports the audience from the lyrical melodies of love in bloom to the anguish of loss and grief. Director Bryant, conductor Simon Bruckard   and an outstanding cast  take the audience on a roller-coaster ride of emotions as we become engrossed in the fateful love affair of struggling writer Rodolfo (John Longmuir) and  consumption stricken Mimi (Danita Weatherstone )

Performed in Italian with English surtitles, La Boheme opens in the apartment of a group of struggling artists, trying to stay warm and keep up the rent demanded by landlord Benoit (Eugene Raggio) Musician Shaunard (Michael Lampard) has come in to some money and the comrades decide to celebrate at the Left bank café Momus. Rodolfo remains behind to finish writing when a knock at the door reveals his neighbor Mimi, who has come to get a light for her candle (Some willing suspension of disbelief is needed for an opera set in the Seventies, but it is the catalyst for a far more dynamic and potentially tragic tale) It is a tale of love at first sight, plagued at times by the trials of true love and Mimi’s persistent cough, an omen of things to come.

Danita Weatherstone is Mimi in La Boheme

Set against Isobel Hudson’s elegantly contrasting design of a vast flowing illustrated  backdrop and changing stage furniture and settings to depict location, the four acts grip the attention and capture the charm and the drama of Puccini’s score and  Guiseppi Giacosa and Luigi Illica’s libretto.  Bryant’s masterful direction breathes fresh life into the 130 year old opera. The performance is full of magic moments of love, merriment and powerful drama.  Bryant masterly draws out strong performances from his cast, ensuring a believability in the character’s predicament and the riveted engagement of the audience. He is wonderfully supported by conductor Bruckard and the members of the touring orchestra who, under Bruckard’s baton perfectly capture the nuances and heightening passions of Puccini’s score. What Opera Australia has achieved with this touring production is a La Boheme that reaches out to the people with a production that could do Opera Australia’s La Boheme proud on any world stage.

Opera Australia is touring a double cast. On one night each role is taken by a singer who on the following night then doubles as a member of the chorus, while the singer playing a chorus member then plays one of the principal characters.  This review is of the opening night when the roles were played by the singers mentioned, for example Longmuir as Rodolfo and Weatherstone as Mimi. 

The singers on opening night attest to the world class talent of Opera Australia’s cast of La Boheme. Longmuir with his powerfully soaring tenor voice is mesmerizing as Mimi’s lover Rodolfo. He expertly charts the demands of artistic bravura, emotional conflict, passionate love and desperate anguish with a voice that transports the audience through his character’s lovestruck and tortured journey. As his soulmate in song, Weatherstone’s Mimi captures our hearts with her fragility, innocence and purity of her soprano rendition of Mimi’s tragic romance. She is the tragic heroine, destined to be denied the happiness that her friend Musetta (Cathy Di-Zhang) says that she deserves. Weatherstone and Longmuir are Puccini’s star-crossed lovers and they deliver performances that would move the Gods to tears.

 

Danita Weatherstone (Mimi), John Longmuir (Rodolfo)

Each performance is worthy of mention in this production. Andrew Williams’s rich baritone rendition of the painter Marcello and lover of Musetta and companion of Rodolfo charts the tempestuous waters of his love for Musetta. Di-Zhang is utterly bewitching as the flighty singer and actress Musetta. Her trickery, playfulness  and deception in Momus is sensitively contrasted with her deep concern for Mimi in the final scene. There are fine performances in the lesser roles of Shaunard (baritone Michael Lampard), philosopher Colline (bass Kiran Rajasingam) and bass Eugene Raggio as the landlord Benoit and Alcindoro the State councilor, duped by Musetta,. There is a charming  rendition of the Christmas chorus by the toymaker (Nick Kirkup) and the delightfully sung children’s chorus.

A touring production may inevitably face the challenges of performing in different venues but this was hardly evident on opening night at the Canberra Theatre. Danien Cooper’s lighting design evoked the emotional shifts of the opera and combined with Hudson’s imaginative design to create a visually stimulating response to this aesthetically designed and directed production of Puccini’s popular and much loved opera. All in all it made for a thoroughly entertaining and moving evening at the opera. Opera Australia’s opening night at the Canberra Theatre presented a La Boheme to love and remember. There are only two performances remaining and this is a Puccini favourite not to be missed. 

 

Photos by Jeff Busby 

 

 

EEugene Raggio as Alcindro with
Cathy-Di Zhang as Musetta in La Boheme