Perspective | Why ‘La Bohème,’ the world’s favorite opera, never seems to get old (2023)

Helpless to resist a proverbial Bohemian rhapsody, I went and saw all three. At this point, this tale of an enclave of starving artists falling in love in the garrets of revolutionary Paris has been told so many times, it can feel as flat as the pages it’s printed on. But a few repeated listens through a trio of varied interpretations helped restore some of its seductive depth.

I went partly out of a simple desire to hear the thing again. I love Puccini’s auspicious score, its bustling crowd of little melodies that converge and mature into themes that seem to hold a whole life. I love its clutter of everyday sentimental stuff: Mimi’s lost key, Musetta’s pawned earrings, Colline’s surrendered coat, Marcello’s unfinished painting. And, admittedly, I love its self-referential brevity, the soul of its wit.

(I’m certain that another part of my drive to submit to three rounds of “La Bohème” was just basic standard-issue masculine identification with Rodolfo and Marcello, who labor under the belief that worthwhile art must entail proportionate suffering.)

But mostly I just wanted to know: Why do we keep coming back to “La Bohème”? And how does one keep it from becoming like one of Mimi’s embroideries, i.e. a flower with no fragrance?

Perhaps it’s the timelessness of this inexhaustible opera, itself based on Henri Murger’s novel and play “Scènes de La Vie de Bohème.” Over the decades, directors have taken full and often literal advantage of this quality: Baz Luhrmann placed it in Paris of the 1950s, Stefan Herheim moved it to a modern-day cancer ward, Claus Guth set it in a spaceship careening into the distant future. “La Bohème” is one of the most versatile and relatable works in the repertory. And it’s also sort of the Billy bookcase of operas.

In the case of Washington National Opera’s revived “Bohème,” directed by Peter Kazaras and now onstage at the Kennedy Center, the action unfolds in a postwar Paris similarly rich in artistic activity, charged by revolutionary spirit, and haunted by death and disease. The slight historical repositioning has not altered the story, but has yielded a production of restrained opulence, popping with rich color and texture that focuses attention on the singing.

On opening night, soprano Gabriella Reyes made a fabulous Mimi, her Act I aria (“Mi chiamano Mimì”) an early display of her talent for masking the power of her voice with an arresting fragility. Tenor Kang Wang was a sturdy and robust Rodolfo, imparting lovely softness when he and Mimi meet cute in Act I (“Che gelida manina”) and hard-edged grief to his Act III confession to Marcello (“Mimì è tanto malata!”).

Soprano Jacqueline Echols was an especially beguiling Musetta. Flanked by waiters playing matador with table linens, she rose above Cafe Momus with flamboyant authority, an ideal foil to the potent, smoky baritone and easy comic timing of Gihoon Kim’s Marcello. Also in fine form, baritone Blake Denson and bass Peixin Chen as the poet Schaunard and the philosopher Colline, with Chen beautifully tender in his overthinking ode to his overcoat (“Vecchia zimarra”). Extra credit goes to bass Peter Rose, who dazzled in the dual role of Benoit the landlord and Musetta’s erstwhile sugar daddy Alcindoro. (Artists from the Cafritz Young Artist Program will take on the lead roles for the May 26 performance.)

Conductor (and former music director of St. Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Theatre) Alevtina Ioffe led the Washington National Opera Orchestra with admirable precision and push. The music cohered beautifully with the singers, with concertmaster Oleg Rylatko delivering an impactful performance, especially his icy lines through the frigid Act III. The addition of the Washington National Opera Chorus and Corps Dancers, plus the Washington National Opera Children’s Chorus, gave the production a populous buzz that leaned grand without using spectacle as a crutch.

How strange to see Mimi up and about the very next afternoon at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, still struggling with that same stubborn cough, still failing to keep her candle lit, but wide-awake once again to the possibilities of love, i.e. “the first kiss of April.”

Since its company premiere on Nov. 9, 1900, “La Bohème” has shown up at the Met for all but nine seasons and a grand total of 1,367 performances (as of last Wednesday). The current revival of Zeffirelli’s 1981 production stands as the most performed production in the company’s history, with nearly 500 performances, more than twice as many as the next most-performed productions at the Met. (At this rate it will be another century before Mimi catches a break.)

At a recent performance, Met music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin posted to Instagram that leading the Zeffirelli was “fulfilling my dream.” It’s not a bad shake for audiences either, more accustomed to experiencing this opera led by Met delegates than its music director. (Paolo Carignani and James Gaffigan will also conduct dates through the run.)

Donning a cerulean jacket garnished with a golden braid, Nézet-Séguin was a wildly effective bellows, restoring a roaring flame to Puccini’s score with vigor and volume. He lit up the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra with unexpected energy and drama, adeptly accounting for the tendency of the cavernous set to swallow up sopranos. Of the three “La Bohèmes” I saw, this one had me closing my eyes and listening.

Unlike Mimi’s hands, tenor Stephen Costello was quick to warm up through the first act as Rodolfo, and he had wonderful vocal chemistry with soprano Eleonora Buratto’s Mimi, a magnetic and agile singer with a diamond-clear high register. Baritone Davide Luciano struggled here and there to surface as Marcello, a hesitance that made more sense once we encountered soprano Sylvia D’Eramo’s fiery Musetta. And while baritone Alexey Lavrov delivered a sweet-natured Schaunard, Met (and personal) favorite bass-baritone Christian Van Horn was sensational as Colline.

The sets — lavishly destitute — earned applause each time the curtain parted. This production requires three hours and includes two full intermissions to account for its extreme world-building demands: Visionary as he was, “poor” was not primary on Zeffirelli’s mood board. Rodolfo and Marcello’s garret is about as squalid as the capacious loft from “Friends.” Even the bleak checkpoint at the Barrière d’Enfer could not keep out Zeffirelli’s overblown elegance.

But sometimes this push toward grandeur feels unproductively at odds with Puccini’s pull toward intimacy: Cafe Momus is tucked into the underbelly of a town square featuring a donkey, a horse and 238 performers playing merchants, children, a marching band. Since the production premiered in 1981, the Act II set has traveled almost 15 miles rolling on and off the Met stage.

In many ways, this production (now directed by Mirabelle Ordinaire) feels suspended in reverence for itself, like a massive snow globe, complete with 15 pounds of paper snow per show. Its gargantuan scale can also feel like a monument to Zeffirelli’s grasp of the grand. But Nézet-Séguin made clear that it just takes some love and attention to relight its candle, to pull a Mimi and bring it right back to life.

On a recent Sunday at the Academy of Music in downtown Philadelphia, music director Corrado Rovaris led his Opera Philadelphia Orchestra through an especially energized closing performance of “La Bohème” from director Yuval Sharon, who has taken the challenge of resurrecting Mimi more literally. Sharon is the artistic director of the Detroit Opera who recently gave the premiere of his tripartite opera “Proximity” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the latest example of a format-busting approach that extends to his tenure helming the experimental Los Angeles-based company The Industry.

This take on “La Bohème,” produced with the Detroit Opera and Spoleto Festival USA, exploits the built-in modularity of Puccini’s unconventional “quattro quadri” (“four pictures”) structure by flipping and reversing it. Meaning that we open with Mimi’s second and traditionally final appearance at Rodolfo’s door, i.e. the swallow coming back to her nest, and work our way backward to the fateful climax of their first encounter.

Sharon’s treatment also leans the production to 100 minutes with the omission of intermission, the streamlining of sets and slight trims to Act I: Benoit doesn’t come to collect the rent. Love’s rush thus sometimes felt a touch too rushed.

This was a brisk and bristling “Bohème,” the drama of Puccini’s melodies brightened and effortlessly underlining the vocals. Tenor Joshua Blue sang a fine Rodolfo alongside soprano Kara Goodrich’s Mimi, their voices buoyant atop Rovaris’s lithe conducting. Baritone Troy Cook was an alluring Marcello, and soprano Melissa Joseph offered a show-stealing Musetta, my favorite “Quando me’n vo’” of the week, situated in my least favorite Cafe Momus.

Bass Adam Lau as Colline and baritone Benjamin Taylor as Schaunard were, in this vision, the third couple, and sung with an appropriately enhanced (if unexpected) sweetness. And the Opera Philadelphia Chorus and Philadelphia Girls and Boys Choirs provided a wonderful richness that felt intentionally absent from the visuals. A spartan set on a tilted turntable stage is presided over by a single Flavinesque bar of fluorescent light. A fleeting Cafe Momus materializes and disperses. A doorway to nowhere frames falling snow like a sky full of stars. This is a Latin Quarter of the mind.

To assist in shepherding viewers against the natural current of the opera, Sharon has inserted a new character, The Wanderer, a ghostly host of sorts, played here by Anthony Martinez Briggs. The Wanderer’s lines derive from Murger’s play, as well as stage directions translated from the original libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. But uttered through the fourth wall — in English no less — the effect is hammy.

“Maybe it could have all turned out differently,” The Wanderer supposes aloud at several junctures. At the Barriere: “What would have happened if Rodolfo went back inside?” At Cafe Momus: “What would have happened if Musetta stayed silent?” And in the new finale of Act I, he slips from narrator to interloper.

It’s a curious strategy, one that manages to draw explicit attention to our experience of a work of art while simultaneously negating it as a series of deliberate choices. I mean, sure, maybe it all could have turned out differently. (Have you seen “Rent”?) In the end, the addition of a chaperone undermines the argument that “La Bohème” can be effectively rearranged. I found myself greeting his appearances with a groan, like the unsolicited assistance of Clippy.

The reversal did have some compelling effects. There is a longer resonance to Rodolfo’s explanation that in hiding Mimi’s key, he was helping destiny (“aiutavo il destino”). And in the finale wrought from Act I, Rodolfo’s bright idea to tear up the pages of his own play and feed it to the stove crackles with wry irony.

But what good is an emotional roller coaster without the plunge? Even as Mimi and Rodolfo leave hand in hand for Cafe Momus, their love on the wing as the curtain dives to the stage, dread prevails. You know full well how this ending is going to begin. It’s only a matter of hours before some other Mimi drops her key and some other Rodolfo seals their fates. And we’ll keep buckling in for the ride, again and again.

It could be the music and the singing that keep us coming back to “La Bohème.” It could be the spectacle and drama we’ve been trained to expect. Or it could be something far more simple: That we’ve all loved, we’ve all lost, and we’ll all continue to do so until nobody’s watching.