HGO's garish `La Boheme' overdoes it
Nearly half of the female patrons at Houston Grand Opera's Friday performance of La Boheme were bedecked with fur. This struck me as odd, given the fact that this is Houston and it wasn't cold outside then. In many ways, this production of Boheme (directed and produced by Herbert Ross, who directed Steel Magnolias ) was quintessentially "Houston," so the fur shouldn't come as a shock.
Houstonians love to over-accessorize. Never content with subtlety or middle-of-the-road glitz, Houston's latest production of La Boheme lost no chance in its grand quest to out-do itself, even if that project meant ignoring the intended verisimo thrust of the original opera.
Granted, Act II as Puccini wrote it is difficult to pull off without making the Left Bank look like a French take on "Springtime for Hitler." But were the weight lifters, explosions and the finale with a full regiment of French flags really necessary?
It's as if Mimi's death -- which ostensibly is caused by her poverty and her position as an operatic heroine -- was a big joke, while the rest of the opera remained in the playground: She just didn't have the sense to stop the charade and go shopping.
Neither Cecilia Gasdia as Mimi nor Vincenzo La Scola as Rodolfo were outstanding, but their performances were satisfying. Gasdia has a interesting voice; it seems expressive by the very nature of its interesting quality. Manuel Lanza's Marcello was the vocal highlight. With a fair amount of tenor sheen in his voice, sometimes Lanza's voice outshone La Scola's.
The extra details were nice. Having the guard outside the Paris gates in Act II simply drinking out of a cup while staring at the audience was also a nice touch. It was a rare glimpse of what real people who inhabit this production's fanciful world may have been doing.
Unfort-unately, here was too much to handle. I liked watching Marcello and Rodolfo sing their duet, but when a man and a boy with fishing poles walked behind them, I half expected to hear the theme to "The Andy Griffith Show." The men's costumes looked like something Ward Cleaver would wear. Were cardigans popular in fin-de-siècle France?
I feel that it's an interesting idea to take opera out of its intended time frame and stage it in the 19th century, when it was written. If the only way to make the most accessible opera interesting is to change it beyond recognition, the opera has lost significance.
This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the January 26, 1996 issue.
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