SCOTTISH Opera has done the impossible. It has staged a version of La boheme which is almost unwatchable in parts.
Not content with Puccini's opening scene, it has inserted a new one, set in a sunny square with the character who turns out to be Musetta singing French songs, not of course Puccini's, accompanied by an accordionist, dressed in typical French fashion but without the onions, to a crowd including what appears to be a Japanese tourist who later turns out to be Mimi.
The scene then shifts to Puccini's real opening in a garret except that the scene doesn't shift; all that happens is that the square remains but the action is restricted to a small part of the stage and we are expected to ignore the buildings in the background and imagine that the previous sunny atmosphere is now a freezing garret.
When the action moves to Cafe Momus the producers decided that the important thing was to crowd as many people as possible on to the stage and squeezed the principals and their interplay into a small part of the stage to one side.
The scene at the city gates was the best part of the production simply because it was set on basically a bare stage letting the singers have free rein unencumbered by nonsense, the only false note being that when the milkmaids entered, for some reason they had to be carrying placards with political slogans.
In preparation for the final scene the producers obviously felt that the attention span of the audience was limited and they filled the gap with the accordionist in one of the boxes, playing Musetta's aria.
In the last scene we were back to the city square/garret where the producers had decided that Puccini's ending lacked drama and in a final infantile touch they made Mimi's body disappear.
I enjoyed the singing and the orchestra. But we have too few opera productions in the year to have one wasted on this garbage.
John F Hart,
9A Crosbie Road, Troon.
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