I could live a perfectly contented life if I never saw La Bohème again. With more than six hundred performances at the Royal Opera House (and well over a thousand at the Met), it is hard to get excited about Giacomo Puccini’s cliche tale about broke creatives falling in love while trying to make ends meet in a bourgeois Paris where capital is king. The doomed romance between Rodolfo and Mimì blossoms on Christmas Eve and fades by spring. But the relationship tragically resumes in her last moments in a bitter reminder that, while life’s chances are frequently missed, exes, if given enough time, come back with almost nauseating regularity. Rodolfo and Mimì’s turbulent counterparts, Marcello and Musetta, might get it and adjust their on-again, off-again affair, but they probably do not. After repeated viewings, the adolescent characters’ absence of experience and lack of emotional control becomes wearying, and even off-putting.
This summer revival of Richard Jones’s relatively new production, which premiered last season, has a few creative twists that still strictly preserve the opera’s nineteenth-century milieu. Highly mobile sets twist and turn to create new locales without the need for the painful second intermission that often makes the opera drag. The Act II tableau depicting Café Momus is laid out like a more modern French café, with banquette-style tables set side by side facing the audience, allowing us to observe all of the characters’ interactions and intrigues. Musetta steals the show with a shoe farce, faking discomfort in order to send her older protector Alcindoro off to get another one. She is so seductive that the mere suggestion of her pain not only controls the old fool, but also commands the attention of the entire staff of waiters, any or all of whom could easily fall under her narcissistic spell. Less compelling is the shared garret, where Rodolfo meets and is later permanently parted from Mimì. In Jones’s production, the garret is a bare unfinished attic that looks more like a freshly raised barn than the digs of starving artists.
Bohème’s obnoxiously enduring popularity draws virtually any singer with the right vocal type to aspire to its lead roles. In a definite improvement over the production premiere’s cast, the role of Mimì went to the rising star Maria Agresta, who started out in bel canto parts and has now risen to the more demanding dramatic soprano repertoire. Her Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello here last year stood out for its creamy luminescence. Her Mimì also scored, but the triteness of the part seemed rather beneath the musical and dramatic subtleties of which she is so demonstrably capable. As her Rodolfo, Matthew Polenzani took a bold career move toward a more weighty role than his natural lyric tenor usually delivers with grace and finesse. Alas, he sounded a bit out of his depth with music that requires greater heft. The French baritone Étienne Dupuis was a reliable, barrel-chested Marcello, and veteran soprano Danielle de Niese’s Musetta made us want to see and hear more of her. Duncan Rock’s muscular Schaunard and Fernando Radó’s contemplative Colline rounded out the cast of Bohemians. Nicola Luisotti’s conducting delivered Puccini’s score as well as anyone could. Under William Spaulding’s consistently excellent direction, the Royal Opera chorus scored another hit.