✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Opera

La Bohème, Royal Opera House 2021 review ★★★★★

19 Jun 21 – 26 Jul 21, Eight performances to socially-distanced audiences, times vary

Revival of Richard Jones's reading of Puccini's heart-breaker for our times

By CW Contributor on 24/6/2021

3 CW readers are interested
Bohemian artists celebrate a success in Puccini's La Bohème. Photo: Tristram Kenton
Bohemian artists celebrate a success in Puccini's La Bohème. Photo: Tristram Kenton
La Bohème, Royal Opera House 2021 review 3 La Bohème, Royal Opera House 2021 review Claudia Pritchard
When I was a student, regulars in the Covent Garden ticket queue talked of one elderly lady who had sat in the same Upper Slips seat for every performance of La Bohème since the retirement in 1926 of the great Dame Nellie Melba. But she would never have attended a performance quite like the Royal Opera’s current revival of this Richard Jones production, first seen in 2017.


This is the first opera that the Royal Opera has staged since March last year requiring a very large orchestra and chorus, and it has gone to such lengths to protect their performers as much as its audience.


In the auditorium, every other row is empty and there are empty seats between bubbles, so that the house is now less than half its capacity. In the orchestra pit, the usual 74 players had been reduced to 47, each one of them individually amplified. Conductor Renato Balsadonna therefore doesn’t have complete control over what the audience hears.


On stage, the revival director, Dan Dooner, had to keep his principal singers safe, both in rehearsal and in performance, by reducing contact to a minimum – just the occasional arm around the shoulders or brief embrace between Mimi and Rodolfo.



Parisian revelry at the Café Momus in Act Two. Photo: Tristram Kenton

Act One, in which Mimi and Rodolfo meet and fall in love, and Act Four, when Mimi returns to die in Rodolfo’s arms, are the most successful in this revival. This production replaced a famous production by John Copley, performed regularly for 40 years, which was as pretty as a Victorian Christmas card. For his production, Richard Jones stripped right back to a bare wooden box for the garret, which bounces the singers’ voices right into the auditorium.


American tenor Joshua Guerrero’s likeable Rodolfo relished his top Cs. Russian-born soprano Anna Princeva as Mimì, making her Covent Garden debut, is a graceful actress who gave a wonderfully structured account of her Act One aria, the steel in her voice helping her to ride the orchestral climaxes and being particularly moving in her death scene.


After the intimacy of the solo voices in Act One, Puccini makes Act Two all about the chorus intertwining with the principals and creating glorious, roof-raising ensembles. In this revival, the chorus are kept offstage (miked, amplified and sounding other-worldly), with only a handful of choristers who have solo lines allowed onto the set and only six people allowed in the Café Momus at any one time, and with 10 children instead of 20. It all felt like making Christmas dinner with wartime rations – heroic, admirable but a bit sad.


Act Two is also the comedy act when Marcello’s ex, the outrageous Musetta (Danielle de Niese), arrives with her current sugar daddy, creates a scene, effects a reunion with Marcello (the lively Boris Pinkhasovich, displaying a gorgeously rich baritone), sticks the sugar daddy with the bill and whips off her bloomers. The Bohemians threw themselves into this scene.



Musetta (Danielle de Niese) whips off her bloomers. Photo: Tristram Kenton


Gianluca Buratto as Colline had been to the barber’s between Act One and Act Two and, now clean-shaven, made every line count with an enormous voice, effortlessly produced, which he scaled down to a subtle pianissimo for the aria in the last Act in which he parts which his coat to buy Mimi’s medicine.


American bass-baritone Cody Quattlebaum's luxuriantly-haired musician Schaunard makes the most of every line. His joy at making his Royal Opera debut seemed to radiate from him, as he he threw himself into a hilariously inept version of break-dancing, a wonderful one-man parade of his own making.


Act Three is the piece of Puccini that I’d take to my desert island – heartbreaking, with unending melody. Princeva sang Mimi’s farewell aria with great poignancy.


There is much to enjoy in this revival and, of course, it is vital that it took place at all, bringing the Chorus and Orchestra – the lifeblood of the Royal Opera – back out of enforced retirement. As we look forward to the day when both can be back once again at their magnificent best, we mustn’t grumble at current limitations.


And of course the Royal Opera House is still the most beautiful theatre in London and a thrilling place to spend an evening. Overheard in the interval: “And guess where she is now? At George Clooney’s 60th birthday party!”


La Bohème is sung in Italian with English surtitles
by Séamus Rea

What La Bohème, Royal Opera House 2021 review
Where Royal Opera House, Bow Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 9DD | MAP
Nearest tube Covent Garden (underground)
When 19 Jun 21 – 26 Jul 21, Eight performances to socially-distanced audiences, times vary
Price £10-£230
Website Click here for more information and booking



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 24–26 March. Photo: The Parakeet, Kentish Town
Things to do in London this weekend: 24–26 March
Irene Maiorino and Alba Rohrwacher in My Brilliant Friend season 4, HBO/Sky Atlantic (Photo: HBO)
My Brilliant Friend, season 4, Sky Atlantic: first-look photo, release date, plot, cast
Best art exhibitions in London. Photo: Thin Air at the Beams
Top exhibitions on now in London

Editor's Picks

Miah Persson's Marschallin dazzles Hanna Hipp's Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier at Garsington. Photo: Johan Persson
Der Rosenkavalier, Garsington Opera review
The Count (Julien Van Mallaerts) and Countess (Nardus Williams) fall out in Opera Holland Park's The Marriage of Figaro. Photo: Ali Wright
The Marriage of Figaro, Opera Holland Park review
A triumphant revival of Opera Holland Park's La Traviata. Photo: Ali Wright
La Traviata, Opera Holland Park 2021 review
Donizetti's comedy Don Pasquale at Glyndebourne. Photo: Clive Barda
Glyndebourne Festival Opera 2022: dates and artists
The Royal Opera House lights up from September. Photo: Luke Hayes
Opera at Covent Garden 2021-22
Natalia Tanasii makes an impressive debut as Tatyana in Eugene Onegin at Garsington. Photo: Julian Guidera
Eugene Onegin, Garsington Opera review
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).

We recommend nearby

  • Dominique Ansel Treehouse
    Read more...
    Map
  • Cora Pearl

    Cora Pearl, the second restaurant from the team behind Kitty Fisher's, takes its name from the infamous 19th-century French courtesan. The menu, consisting of both French and British influenced cuisine, is deceptively simple, with cheese and ham toasties, fish stew, and chocolate ganache on offer.

    Read more...
    Book Map
  • Homeslice, Fitzrovia

    Laid back in its concept and style, the restaurant's premise is simple: delicious 20-inch pizzas, which can also be ordered by individual slice. Homeslice draws a relaxed crowd, and is remarkably good value. Eating at this no cutlery/paper plates pizzeria can be a joyously messy affair.

    Read more...
    Book Map
3

Royal Opera House

Puccini

Richard Jones

Danielle de Niese

Cody Quattlebaum

Joshua Guerrero

Anna Princeva



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×