Death becomes her
The remarkable new/old production of La bohème from Norwegian Opera, directed by Stefan Herheim, is streaming from NETT-TV, though apparently it is not available in all areas. If you can’t get it to work, there are a couple of excerpts on YouTube to hold you over until it shows up on DVD later this spring.
Well, here’s what I think:
My mom is in and out of the hospital right now. I, too, am going through a very difficult conflation of a lifetime of memories that are not about hospitals and death, but are now blended in with powerful images of my mother’s final weakness and vulnerability, the very sad ultimate physical changes. Everything gets passed through that lens.
I’ve watched the clips, which reveal some of the ideas. And Cieca’s descriptions also help. Who knows? Maybe if I saw the production I would not like it, even detest it. But reading about it here, it makes a lot of sense to me.
My friends have all teased me for years that I go to Boheme because I like to sit in a big dark room and cry while pretty music plays, which is true. Boheme, like Lucia and Traviata, is one of the operas that gives me “permission” to cry. But I must say, after reading about this production, that I never considered the why or how of it. I mean, I knew the parts in Boheme that would make me cry, but never thought too hard about it. Reading about this production is very engaging and personal, and I will have to do some thinking.
Incidentally, there was one time, at the Met, where it was Mimi’s “leitmotif” playing when she knocks at the door in Act I that made me melt. Interesting that Cieca describes this moment in the production.
I also think it’s important not to be too categorical or too binary about this. It’s every bit as daft to write off ‘traditional’ productions unseen as it is to do so with regie productions.
A well-thought out, honest production of BOHEME in doesn’t have to be comforting or indulgent or conservative- it can still be searing and real and shocking. There are few productions more traditional and staid than the ROH’s BOHEME- and yet look what Cotrubas, Shicoff and Allen make of it.
Then there are the productions that fall in the middle. David McVicar’s Glyndebourne touring BOHEME was one of the most devastating opera productions I’ve ever seen, and although it was set in a scummy flat in Tottenham Court Road in the late 1990s, it was in every other way a completely ‘traditional’ production. But it was also a production which was determined to make Mimi’s death as shocking and as random as la cieca rightly points out it must be, rather than something sweetly wistful. Part of it was in the casting- this opera works best, I think, when the Bohemians are credibly young (and the vocal demands don’t rule this out, fortunately). All the time I was watching it (and I was only in my 20s at the time) I kept thinking ‘these poor children, they don’t know what they’re dealing with.
My personal litmus test of a BOHEME is Musetta’s little prayer in Act 4. (‘fate la grazia a questa poveretta che non debba morir’). That absolutely needs to tear your heart out. Far too often you just get generic sad face #4.
Will: In response to your comment--yes. The time difference isn’t huge (1830s for Hugo, 1840s for Murger). Indeed, in reading Hugo, I’ve wondered if the Boheme adapters haven’t helped themselves to a little local Parisian color.
Not to forget that the relationship between Rodolfo, Mimi and Schunard should be carefully watched. It has always seemed to me that Puccini leaves a nearly-invisible trail that we can barely see until the last act when Rodolfo asks Schunard and Colline to leave him and Mimi alone. I have always suspected that Schunard is deeply in love with Mimi, but that his love for and loyalty to Rodolfo make it impossible for him to say or do anything. Once I have seen a performance -- at San Diego Opera, of all places — where the singer gave substance to this buried emotion, not by doing or saying anything that was not in the text but merely by careful focus and watchful stillness at telling moments. His understanding and skill gave a marvelously detailed texture to the conclusion of the opera.
Sorry….butterfingers….”Schaunard”
HK
I spent a little too much cash and ordered the Herheim Eugene Onegin from the Netherlands-
While it wasn’t incredible (or as amazing as his Parsifal I saw last summer at Bayreuth) it was clearly incredibly thought out- the most interesting part of the DVD was the documentary that was attached- He clearly thinks about every single line, every single moment of the opera he is working on. I think that is problem with the directorial talent Gelb is hiring- I really don’t imagine Michael Grandage pouring our the libretto again, and again, and again. Dismiss regie if you want, but at least this one regiesseur takes immense interest in the work he is presenting.
and, if you’re reading this Herr Herheim, if you are interested in going on a date with a cute 37 year old NY’er, give me a ring