"La Bohème": almost a bore

Last night a group of us went to see the 'simulcast' of La Bohème broadcast directly from the Royal Opera House.  I, personally, came out disappointed.  Not, I hasten to add, just because the work was sung (quite correctly) in Italian and the English subtitle system failed - they should have sought the advice of an experienced electronics engineer such as myself! (see below) - and certainly not because the famous tenor playing Rodolpho was down with bronchitis and his part was sung (superbly as far as I can judge) by a young Russian, Dmytro Popov, and absolutely not because the leading lady, Maija Kovalevska as Mimi, looked, despite her elegant beauty, a tad too old for a really young girl, but because . . . because . . . well, it just didn't happen for me, that's why!

I do realise that that first paragraph is not likely to earn me a place in the gallery of distinguished opera critics since it amounts to no more than me opening my mouth and letting my belly rumble and thus disclosing, what you had already suspected, that I know nothing about grand opera.  Guilty as charged, m'Lud!  But, as I have written many a time and oft' in these columns, art is visceral!  It either does the business, that is, raise your emotional temperature - or not.  This did, but only on an intermittent basis.  The story is simplicity itself - nothing wrong with that -  boy meets girl, girl gets sick, love affair sundered under enormous strain, boy and girl get back together, girl dies - and that's it!  What few alternative sub-plots that exist are insubstantial and do not catch our attention, let alone our hearts.  So, it's all down to Rodolpho and Mimi - and, of course, the music.

The performers, I think, suffered under the withering eye of the cameras in this simulcast.  In my piece on Les Miserables I pointed out that if some of the singing might not have been of the absolutely first rate (but it was good enough for me), the acting was.  The problem for opera singers is that the very form of their art places huge demands on their singing abilities which leaves them little room - almost literally and physically little room - for them to act.  Alas, the prying cameras showed that up where-as, I suspect, were you in the Opera House and viewing from a distance you would not notice it to the same degree.  I hasten to make clear that everyone in that performance was trying their best to act, as well as sing, and they very nearly brought it off but with acting, brutal business that it is, you either do or you die!

On the subject of the music, of course, there is the famous duet between the two lovers which most people know and it is truly a lovely and deeply moving piece which haunts the memory.  But that's it, or at least, that's it for an opera ignoramus like me.  Sorry, Signor Puccini!

 

Comments

[david morris]

Your penultimate para sez it all.

Defy you not to have had a tear in the eye over the duet though

Kind regards

[David Duff]

Yeah, David, it is gorgeous.

[Andra]

Picky, picky, picky.
Bloody whinging Pom!
Not that this ignorant old Aussie sheila knows a damned thing about opera. Well, I know I like the music well enough, just don't like all the people shrieking at me.
Carmen excepted... love the music and can cope with the shriekers, sort of.
There. Another country heard from.

[David Duff]

You should have gone to see it, Andra, er, they do have cinema 'out back', don't they? Doesn't that old geezer still come round every month in his wagon with his hand-turned projector to show his films up against the jailhouse wall, it being the only brick-built building in town?

[Paul Minter]

I am no great opera fan, I quite agree with Andra, the music is fine, but the squawking ain't. In fact some of my favourite pieces of music are opera intermezzi.

If, like me, you are a Simpsons aficionado, you will be aware that Homer played Rodolpho in the episode 'Homer of Seville': http://operagasm.com/homer-simpson-stars-in-la-boheme/.

Never having been to one of these 'simulcast' events, may I ask : if the subtitle system had bee working, would it have had a 'bouncing ball thingy' that moved from word to word, allowing the audience to singalong?

Enough childishness from me, I will allow the more erudite comments to continue.

[backofanenvelope]

The problem with this approach to opera is the close ups. They are just too close. I remember seeing a Star Trek film and the huge close ups of the lady officers of the Enterprise were just awful. Talk about pock marks! It wasn't a problem with the black radio officer of course. Perhaps the obvious answer for these opera simulcasts is to get the cameramen to back off.

[David Duff]

Not much 'erudition' here, Paul, but I like the idea of the singalong even if, given my non-singing abilities, I might have been asked to leave.

Quite so, BOAE, it was the close-ups that spoiled the simulcast. However, for plays and also ballet, these simulcasts are terrific and I urge you to give them a try.