Soprano Marianne Fiset as Mimi. Photo by Tim Matheson
By Louise Phillips
If you wear mascara, make it waterproof. Vancouver Opera’s latest La Bohème, at Queen Elizabeth Theatre (to Oct. 28), is a terrific tear-jerker. Opening the season with Puccini’s beloved work is a box-office no-brainer for Vancouver Opera, but it’s always a challenge for the cast to re-invent characters and make the audience forget the big-name singers who have immortalized them: Callas and Pavarotti, for starters.
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No international headliners in this almost all-Canadian cast, but strong work from the principals and ensemble, directed with an eye to detail by UBC’s Nancy Hermiston. Tenor Jason Slayden is a compelling, romantic Rodolfo, and Marianne Fiset brings a bell-like lyric soprano to the consumptive Mimi. Small in stature, Fiset has enormous stage presence and (ironically) robust lungpower.
Puccini introduces the four young Bohemians with a rambunctious opening salvo. Rodolfo writes, Marcello (energetic baritone Etienne Dupuis) paints, Schaunard (baritone Aaron Durand) is a musician and Colline (Stephen Hegedus) a philosopher. They are starving cheerfully in a Paris garret when Mimi comes in with her unlit candle. “Your little hand is cold,” sings an infatuated Rodolfo; Mimi faints from hunger and illness, and we know from the music as well that tragedy looms.
Meanwhile, mezzo Krisztina Szabó as Marcello’s mistress Musetta, the brassy good-time girl with a heart of gold, sparkles in the Café Momus scene. It’s no mean feat on a stage packed with a large chorus of townsfolk, soldiers and small children in a giddy, gaudy pantomime of Christmas Eve festivities.
There’s weepy fun before the final, satisfying sob-fest. Conductor Leslie Dala mines the score’s emotional heart, and the conversational-yet-melodic duets for the two pairs of lovers merit a pocket full of hankies.
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