Australian Opera - 2017 Season - La Boheme

Australian Opera 2017 Season - La Boheme - Cafe Momus

Puccini's La Boheme is a staple of any opera company's performance repertoire and in any given two year period almost always makes an appearance on the seasonal programme. Director Gale Edwards has repositioned La Boheme in the 2017 version into the historical period of the Weimar Republic in Germany on the eve of the Nazi period. The sets and costumes are reminiscent of the 1930s with just a hint of the nationalism and arising Nazi influence which characterised that period. In many respects this version of La Boheme often resembles the musical Cabaret  given the Cafe Momus is more of a cabaret/cocktail lounge replete with bare breasted young women gliding along the poles of the private boxes.

The opera is in four Acts and centres on the relationship of two couples - the first being Rudolfo, a writer poet and Mimi a young seamstress and the second, Marcello, a painter and Musetta, a singer and former flame of Marcello's. Rudolfo and Marcello share a studio together visited by their comrades Colline, a philosopher and Schaunard, a musician. Like their other contemporaries, they are very poor and scratch out a living.

Essentially La Boheme is a story of tragedy and lost love and the opera concludes with the death of Mimi. The sets are impressive, the casting of the singers well chosen (Arthur Espiritu as Rodolfo, Andrew Jones as Marcello, Greta Bradman as Mimi, Julie Lea Goodwin as Musetta) and the staging of the production is faultless. Nonetheless the repositioning of La Boheme into Weimar Germany hits a jarring note and provides a needless distraction. The presence of quasi fascist uniforms and a drum corp of the League of German Girls adds to the disconnect between Puccini's original work and the reinterepretation. In this sense it is not a successful production.