Puccini, La Bohème: Soloists, Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, cond. Philippe Jordan, dir. John Copley. Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 23.10. 2006. (JPr) 

 

 

The first night of this present production by John Copley, with designs by the late Julia Trevelyan Oman and original lighting by William Bundy was on 6 February 1974, and I saw it for the first time in 1982. My visits to this same garret must run to double figures by now but it was worth revisiting it as it ‘comes of age’ in the ’21 today’ old fashioned sense.

 

The good news is that the Royal Opera House programmes are becoming more interesting than they used to be and there was a fascinating article (Staying Power) looking back over the years of the Copley version by Sarah Lenton. It includes a very perceptive comment by stage manager, Simon Catchpole:

 

‘The thing with La Bohème is that the score dictates what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to put the manuscripts in the stove, and go and find a candle to light Mimì’s candle. And there’s got to be a key. A new Rodolfo can be told this is your desk, that’s the stove, and he can get on with it. John’s production is very traditional so, if someone goes sick, you can slot in a newcomer and manoeuvre them around the stage, confident that the set will dictate where they’ve got to be.’

 

As you will read below this was more prescient than anyone could imagine. Unfortunately what this essay also did was remind everyone of some of the names that have graced this production throughout the years ‘Domingo, Carreras, Contrubas [sic], Howell, Te Kanawa, Pavarotti, Tomlinson, Mattila and Gheorghiu’. Regrettably this did little for an old-timer like me but to highlight the deficiencies of some of their current successors.

 

As Sarah Lenton goes on to write ‘The only bit of business that changes from opera house to opera house is the horse play in Act IV, and the Royal Opera House business has to be rehearsed very thoroughly’. Simon Catchpole further reminisces that:

 

‘The big problem with that game is that they get a shovel, and break off chunks from the baguette and sort of play cricket – and the next minute we have bits of French loaf flying into the audience and orchestra. So we rehearse that thoroughly, to make sure they send everything upstage.’

 

This is nearly all you need to know to get an idea (if you have never seen it) of this realistic staging with its Act II three-level Café Momus and Act III snow that is full of natural emotion and exuberant ‘vie de Bohème’. Only one stunning revelation remains to be passed on and that is that recent cleaning of the Act II bandsmen’s costumes indicates that ‘they were almost certainly on stage for the first night in 1899’ when this opera was performed for the first time in Italian at Covent Garden!

 

Bringing John Copley back to rehearse this revival was an excellent idea and it will have served to extend this production’s potential life. The sets seemed to have been ‘freshened up’ to reveal the shabbiness of the faded glory of eighteenth century Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century without displaying their own deterioration. More importantly John Charlton’s lighting (after William Bundy) has dragged the mise en scène clearly out from the murk that it had disappeared into, that making it recently look like a series of faded sepia photographs.

 

This had been very carefully thought through and all that was needed was a cast and conductor to be worthy of this effort. Without doubt it was a thoroughly competent evening but the roster of principals did not really have the depth of experience that should be expected from an international opera house. In something that seems to have been a familiar pattern over the years in this opera (why?) a more experienced soprano Nuccia Focile was (originally) cast as Musetta, leaving the role of Mimì to a former member of the Royal Opera’s Young Artists programme, Katie Van Kooten. Even accounting for this character’s fragile state of health an unpleasant vibrato marred her overly cautious performance.

 

The bohemians were undoubtedly well-matched by age and looked the part of students, but vocally I was not entirely convinced that William Dazeley (Marcello), along with another former Young Artist, Jared Holt as Schaunard and Alexander Vinogradov (Colline) gelled as a trio. The latter seems to have had the most international experience and this showed in ‘Vecchia zimarra’ as he paid eloquent farewell to his coat without it descending into bathos. William Dazeley is also a fine singer but surely his voice is heading towards bass-baritone - this altered perceptively the dynamics in the ensemble singing.

 

Amongst the roster of Covent Garden regulars in the smaller roles was Robert Tear who even after 36 years on this stage cannot keep away, and was singing Alcindoro for the first time.

 

Making the best of her luck in the most stunning way was Anna Leese, who fairly late on replaced the injured Nuccia Focile as Musetta. This young New Zealander is a graduate of the Royal College of Music Benjamin Britten International Opera School, and she is a genuine talent. On the one hand gauche, but otherwise extremely confident of her character’s potent sexual allure and her handling of the billiard cue potted all the right balls. The voice was forward (unlike some of her male colleagues), bright and very secure and she has a future amongst the repertory of Puccini heroines.

 

Another without any problem of putting his voice out into the auditorium is Royal Opera’s music director Antonio Pappano’s seemingly favourite tenor, the Argentinean, Marcello Alvarez. He is obviously being groomed as the heir to some of Domingo’s roles but in fact it is Pavarotti that his voice most resembles in its ardent lyrical quality and ease of projection of a firmly held top C in ‘Che gelida manina’. This may similarly count against him in tenor roles that require a little more baritonal quality, such as some of those by Verdi, but time will tell. He is undoubtedly a ‘team player’ and bounds around stage with much boyish enthusiasm, but there was a little too much preening of his hair for my liking. He may just however have lost a little faith in his Mimì towards the end of the evening as he began to concentrate on his singing in a more showy way, culminating in his final cries of ‘Mimì!’ being given a full frontal assault with his hands almost cupped to his mouth.

 

I have not always admired Philippe Jordan’s work on the concert platform but I think that he may get more admirers over the year as an opera conductor, following his illustrious father, Armin, who died this September and to whom I would assume his son, privately, dedicated these performances. His accompaniment was at its most sensitive for the individual arias and duets or quartets: there were many individual orchestral contributions I admired notably from the harp, solo violin and cello to underscore these passages. In the bigger moments such as the difficult Act II with so much going on, things may just have come adrift a little but I am sure this will be put right in future performances. Collectively the Royal Opera House Chorus and Orchestra continue their recent exciting renaissance and they were first rate as usual.

 

In must therefore conclude that unless Covent Garden wishes to pension this version off for some potential directoritis then as Andrew Porter commented some time ago: ‘There is no reason why it should ever be changed, provided it can stand up to 75 years of  constant use’.

 

 

 

Jim Pritchard