Homoki's Bohème at the KOB
Originally published at Operanews.com
New productions of beloved operas often turn sour when overzealous directors step in with one too many ideas up their sleeves. So perhaps it was for the best that Andreas Homoki, the artistic director of the Komische Oper Berlin, opted for a basic and scaled-down stage concept for La Bohème that, in the best possible way, let the music speak for itself.
One key to this production's success was the exceptional singing from a young and energetic cast, who communicated the thrill and zeal of Puccini's bohemians in a way that the clunky German-language translation often fell short of conveying. Another factor was the intensely concentrated work by the orchestra, led by the company's music-director designate, American conductor Carl St. Clair.
The evening's Rodolphe was Timothy Richards, a Welsh tenor with a deep, soothing voice. His sustained notes were a bit whiny and the orchestra drowned him out early on. But during the breakup in Scene III, he sang in a weeping voice with warm, dark shadings. Only once or twice did his voice grow murky.
Alluring Swiss soprano Brigitte Geller made a spirited, vulnerable Mimi. She sang with exciting and exacting clarity, even if her delivery became a bit too staccato at times. Her high notes were wonderfully sustained with a pleasant trill. St. Clair often gave her slow tempos, which she followed with full, sentimental abandon. In the final scene, her voice grew fragile, but not at the expense of audibility. The other principal woman of the evening was the Bavarian soprano Christiane Karg, who sang Musette as a Madison Avenue tramp in a quick, snappy voice as dry and as bubbly as the champagne they served at Momus.
Mirko Janiska was a tempestuous and stubborn Marcel. He was most in control during the stunning Scene 2 duet with Rodolphe. (Marcel dealt Rodolphe a slap for refusing to care for the dying Mimi.) He sang the duet and the subsequent quartet with a powerful, deeply moving voice.
As the other bohemians, Renatus Mészár was a throaty, vibrato-heavy Colline clad in a flowing leather trench coat. Günter Papendell, a bouncy, persuasive baritone, made a flamboyant Schaunard.
The opera was performed without intermission. Homoki kept the curtain raised on a completely naked stage, which gave his staging the aspect of a bargain-basement production. The one fixed prop was a massive Christmas tree that the chorus elaborately assembled in the second scene and dismantled at the opera's conclusion. Homoki's most innovative suggestion came in the fourth scene. Rather than set it in the old apartment of the friends, the finale instead unfurled amid a lavish banquet for Rodolphe, now a famous author, who was seen signing copies of a book simply titled Mimi. In seemed a suitable companion piece to Peter Konwitschny's production of Don Giovanni, where the descent to hell was interpreted as a forced acceptance of bourgeois conformity. Less successful was the play-acting that the singers affected whenever they warmed-up for famous numbers, which may have been an attempt to inject some sarcasm into this irony-proof opera. The same goes for the baffling food-fight that directly preceded Mimi's death scene, which left Rodolphe wiping eggnog off his head with a tablecloth before rushing to the side of his dying beloved.
New productions of beloved operas often turn sour when overzealous directors step in with one too many ideas up their sleeves. So perhaps it was for the best that Andreas Homoki, the artistic director of the Komische Oper Berlin, opted for a basic and scaled-down stage concept for La Bohème that, in the best possible way, let the music speak for itself.
One key to this production's success was the exceptional singing from a young and energetic cast, who communicated the thrill and zeal of Puccini's bohemians in a way that the clunky German-language translation often fell short of conveying. Another factor was the intensely concentrated work by the orchestra, led by the company's music-director designate, American conductor Carl St. Clair.
The evening's Rodolphe was Timothy Richards, a Welsh tenor with a deep, soothing voice. His sustained notes were a bit whiny and the orchestra drowned him out early on. But during the breakup in Scene III, he sang in a weeping voice with warm, dark shadings. Only once or twice did his voice grow murky.
Alluring Swiss soprano Brigitte Geller made a spirited, vulnerable Mimi. She sang with exciting and exacting clarity, even if her delivery became a bit too staccato at times. Her high notes were wonderfully sustained with a pleasant trill. St. Clair often gave her slow tempos, which she followed with full, sentimental abandon. In the final scene, her voice grew fragile, but not at the expense of audibility. The other principal woman of the evening was the Bavarian soprano Christiane Karg, who sang Musette as a Madison Avenue tramp in a quick, snappy voice as dry and as bubbly as the champagne they served at Momus.
Mirko Janiska was a tempestuous and stubborn Marcel. He was most in control during the stunning Scene 2 duet with Rodolphe. (Marcel dealt Rodolphe a slap for refusing to care for the dying Mimi.) He sang the duet and the subsequent quartet with a powerful, deeply moving voice.
As the other bohemians, Renatus Mészár was a throaty, vibrato-heavy Colline clad in a flowing leather trench coat. Günter Papendell, a bouncy, persuasive baritone, made a flamboyant Schaunard.
The opera was performed without intermission. Homoki kept the curtain raised on a completely naked stage, which gave his staging the aspect of a bargain-basement production. The one fixed prop was a massive Christmas tree that the chorus elaborately assembled in the second scene and dismantled at the opera's conclusion. Homoki's most innovative suggestion came in the fourth scene. Rather than set it in the old apartment of the friends, the finale instead unfurled amid a lavish banquet for Rodolphe, now a famous author, who was seen signing copies of a book simply titled Mimi. In seemed a suitable companion piece to Peter Konwitschny's production of Don Giovanni, where the descent to hell was interpreted as a forced acceptance of bourgeois conformity. Less successful was the play-acting that the singers affected whenever they warmed-up for famous numbers, which may have been an attempt to inject some sarcasm into this irony-proof opera. The same goes for the baffling food-fight that directly preceded Mimi's death scene, which left Rodolphe wiping eggnog off his head with a tablecloth before rushing to the side of his dying beloved.
