La Boheme, Opera San Jose, May 28 2011

After having given three previews on La Boheme, which involved deeper study than I have previously given the opera, I was ready for an emotionally draining experience in the opera house. (I even had to cut out pieces from the talks I gave, figuring that it wasn’t good form for the speaker to lose his composure, especially over a fictional character.) Instead, I got one of those rare experiences: a dry-eyed La Boheme. Nothing particularly went wrong, but very little went right either.

The sets were, of course, traditional. The Bohemians are clearly living at the top of the building, with gigantic wooden beams and their supports running across the top of their garret. There is an easy chair and a stove. There is no table, but there is a copper bathtub, with wheels artfully concealed beneath it. When the Bohemians need a table, they wheel the tub out to center stage; Colline gets in the tub and a plank is laid across the tub, above his feet, and the comestibles are served on top of it. The largest object on stage is an artist’s scaffold, a large wooden structure with steps on one side and vertical on the other, the sort of thing that Cavaradossi might pull up next to the painting of the Madonna that he is working on, but rather out of place in the Bohemian’s garret, even though Marcello is working on a large (at least 6 feet on a side) painting of “The Crossing of the Red Sea.” Marcello’s painting technique is most unusual—the term “slapdash” comes to mind. He is taking broad swipes at what looks like a finished painting; he looks more like he is dusting the painting than creating it. And how he is going to get that monster out the door and down the stairs is something that he will leave to the stagehands to figure out. In the front right corner of the stage (from the audience’s viewpoint) is a small structure enclosing a large window that can be opened to permit Rodolfo (and later, Colline) to step out onto a small balcony.

The Act 2 set garnered applause as the curtain went up. It’s a small Parisian plaza, with the Cafe Momus to the left, a charcuterie (think butcher shop) behind the Cafe, and to the right a brasserie and another shop. On the backdrop are convincingly painted the buildings in the background, and there is a broad alley in the center for the entrances of Parpignol and Musetta. Of course, there are lots of people milling about.

Act 3, at the gates of Paris, has a large steel fence in the center, with the customs official’s shack immediately to the right and Marcello and Musetta’s inn on the left; the inn has an external brick staircase to the second floor. Sad to day, the brick staircase was not all that stable, and wobbled noticeably when Rodolfo or Marcello used it. There is no evidence of the repurposed “Crossing of the Red Sea.” Act 4 is back in the garret, looking just like Act 1, except that the copper tub has been pushed to one side to make way for a bed.

Our cast:
Marcello: Torlef Borsting
Rodolfo: Alexander Boyer
Colline: Isaiah Musik-Ayala
Schaunard: Daniel Cilli
Benoit: Paul Murray
Mimi: Jasmina Halimic
Musetta: Sandra (Rubalcava) Bengochea
Alcindoro: Stephen Boisvert
Parpignol: Lee Steward
Conductor: David Rohrbaugh
Director: Timothy Near

It was a pleasure to hear Sandra Bengochea again. She continues to sing beautifully, and brought all of the spunk that Musetta needs—perhaps too much. When she complains about her foot hurting, places her foot on a chair, and hikes up her skirts, she hikes them way up, so much so that Alcindoro feels compelled to place his top hat in a certain place. I presume that was a directorial decision, and just one of several misfires:

• Rodolfo leaves the door to the garret open as he escorts Mimi to the Cafe Momus.
• Mimi begins her Waltz sitting on a “throne” made by placing a chair on a table, with four young men very close by gazing at her unrealistically.
• The maid whom Mimi asks to go fetch Marcello has just emptied two chamberpots into a large barrel in the middle of the plaza.
• As Act 4 opens, Marcello is painting a smaller picture, but he’s holding it in one hand (no other support) while dabbing at it with the other.
• Colline sings “Vecchia zimarra” from the small balcony.
  

One directorial decision was right on. The street sweepers pass the inn just as Musetta (offstage) sings a wistful version of her Waltz. One sweeper pauses to listen, enraptured, to one of the few touches of beauty in his life, and then moves on.

On the whole, competently performed, but not much more. A gamma, or a bit better.