Above: Kang Wang gave a passionate performace as Rodolfo. Photo Credit: Prudence Upton. Featured Image: the cast of La Bohème. Photo Credit: Prudence Upton.

Puccini’s loved work opens the 2022 Opera Australia Sydney Season in passionate verismo style. It’s tale of illness, hope, support and kindness  mirrors some of our current world predicament. It draws us completely in to the realism of character and predicament of another time. This tale of bohemia and the network of suffering characters is stuff of operatic stage legend. The audience ravished the chance to be back in the theatre live to delve once more into this well- packaged Puccini drama.

Musically this was a very successful presentation. Puccini’s operatic style, carrying us beautifully along with sound effect, dialogue dripping in atmospheric accompaniment and more expanded stunning gesture is welcome fare for our hungry live opera deprived ears. All this meaty rendition comes attractively packaged as Gale Edwardes’ production swathed in sumptuous 1930’s Berlin gloss is presented in revival with great directness and believable boldness.

Led commandingly from the pit by conductor Lorenzo Passerini, we heard the Opera Australia Orchestra respond with exciting richness of tone and fullness of support over which the vocal outbursts gilded the texture and completed some very rewardingly dense soundscapes.

Costumes by Julie Lynch and sets by Brian Thompson endure to still dazzle us in this production revival. As well as a gripping musical assault by orchestra, soloists, children and adult chorus ensemble, this glimpse into the hearts of the bohemian life is attractively wrapped to hurl us back in time-not as far back as Puccini’s original opera, but with the reality of Puccini’s verismo vision and the timelessnes of live and kindness of friends capably realised.

Above : Soprano Valeria Sepe performed the role of Mimi

Shaun Rennie’s revival direction has a brilliant economy and masters the expressive demands and need for effective pacing of the story as created by Puccini. There is admirable momentum here, with genuine emotion, humour and joy finely chiselled. The sentiment and style hits the mark even almost two centuries after its creation with believable and candid stage presence and character interaction.

Julie Lea Goodwin’s Musetta burst arrestingly onto the stage at the glittering Café Momus in Act Two. Her vivacity was matched by seamless soaring vocals in the treasured Musetta’s Waltz  and a keen parlance as well as vibrant and spirited  tussles with other characters. Her characterisation was matched especially well with this production’s Marcello, played and sung with incredible dramatic range and range of nuance as Musetta’s troubled lover by  Haotian Qi.

 Lighting up the stage in many moments was the rewarding chemistry of Valeria Sepe and Kang Wang as Mimi and Rodolfo. Their vocal blend was excellently smooth as the pair ignited Mimi’s candle and also a captivating dramatic path they embarked on from the outset and pursued with earnest ease.

Above: Julie Lea Goodwin performed the role of Musetta.

Comedy, cuteness and cutting edge lyricism were presented in a fashion to tastefully maintain a lithe dramatic focus for this pair  topped off withheady, headstrong and vivid musical moments. Following the intensity of their initial love at first sight meeting in Rodolfo’s semi or pitch darkness, musical jewels such as Che gelida manina (What a cold little hand) and O soave fanciulla (O lovely girl) flowed organically out of the quality acting,  never emerging as stilted favouritez divorced from the flow of storytelling.

These singers and characters were heard with two voices working warmly as one above a refreshingly solid orchestral tapestry. This combination emphatically emphasised the moment as we followed the lovers’ plight described from the inside out, braving the cold and debilitating  illness of the lungs with no real cure.

Colour and humour were balanced well and belonged alonside tragedy throughout this Opera Australia favourite in racy revival. The children’s chorus and variegated tableaux in the street and café scenes succeeded, dazzling us with caricature and motion even when the stage was challengingly full. The male ensemble of bohemian creatives was a fitting visual mixed bag who always delighted and worked well as a comedic unit.

Above : The role of Schaunard was played by Shane Lowrencev.  Photo credit: Keith Saunders.

The contrast to desperate, more tragic scenes for this merry band with less slapstick comic timing in visual gags and more heartbreaking verismo laments was convincing and full of tender subtlety as well as clever ensemble bariety with regards to vocal colour and movement.

Beside Kang Wang’s achingly fine voice and  successful use of the stage, the powerhouse voice of Valeria Sepe soared and dipped to paint a perfect picture of fragility. In  counterpoint with choreographed coughing which we could feel the pain in, Sepe’s narrative was riveting. Right from her initial introduction Si, mi chiamano Mimi (yes, they call me Mimi) to the lung-wrenching, fading intimacy of her Sono andati? (Have they gone?) sequence the fading flame trajectory of her dying character was expertly measured and always in penetrating voice.

This tale of urgent love, well-humoured but struggling lovers has never been more relevant. In our current climate where even  large opera companies have had a struggle, the hardship and trials of the bohemians on this slick production stage do well to energise and impress us. The sobbing final vocal phrases from Wang’s Rodolfo mourned his lover’s death, perhaps our pandemic frustration and illustrated  the sheer  skill with which our local opera industry can revive and retell this well known story.

La Bohème plays at the Sydney Opera house until February 4.