Susan Granger’s review of “La Boheme” (2002-2003 season)
Bravo! After revitalizing the movie musical with his controversial, Oscar-nominated “Moulin Rouge,” Australian director Baz Luhrmann has launched a Broadway revolution with his exciting, revisionist version of Puccini’s opera “La Boheme,” which includes an international cast of sleek, young, attractive singers who – surprise! – can also act. The story relates the tragic love affair between the seamstress Mimi and the impetuous writer Rodolfo, set in the world of starving bohemian artists in Paris. Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica’s libretto has been updated from the 1840s to 1957. In this celebration of doomed romance, three actresses rotate in the vocally demanding Mimi role (Lisa Hopkins, Wei Huang, Ekaterina Solovyeva), just as there are three Rodolfos (Alfred Boe, Jesus Garcia & David Miller). Two singers alternate as the painter Marcello (Eugene Brancoveanu, Ben Davis) and coquettish Musetta (Jessica Comeau, Chloe Wright). They sing Puccini’s opera in the traditional Italian text with eye-catching English subtitles strategically superimposed on the eye-candy scenery created by Luhrmann’s talented wife, Catherine Martin, illuminated by lighting designer Nigel Levings and costumed (even the stagehands) by Angus Strathie. Opera purists may gripe about the subtle use of body microphones to amplify the singers and two digital keyboards to augment the 26-piece orchestra, but I was spellbound. Baz Luhrmann’s genius is not just in the fluid, sumptuous visual staging and minute detail but in his audacious repackaging of this highbrow classic for mainstream musical theater. On the Granger Theater Gauge of 1 to 10, this “La Boheme” is an inventive, sexy, stylish 10. It’s an intense, astounding, exhilarating theatrical experience, the one Broadway show not to miss.