My review of Baz Luhrmann’s La Boheme.

First impressions. The set reminded me of Moulin Rouge. I read in the paper that Luhrmann created La Boheme long before he created Moulin Rouge, and you can see in the set and costume designs echoes of the movie.

What was different about this production of La Boheme, was the opera singers. Most opera singers in are older and look it. Most opera singers also tend to be broader and bigger. The cast members of Luhrmann’s La Boheme all looked so young, probably age 30 and under, and looked like normal young people. For La Boheme’s story, this type of casting works incredibly well since the opera is about young bohemians. The guys actually looked like the parts they were playing. Since Luhrmann sets the opera in the 50’s, the time charge further added to the very modern look of the opera. The modern look definitely draws a more younger audience in, especially an audience not used to opera. Opera has the reputation for being stuffy. Luhrmann’s La Boheme was anything but stuffy.

Luhrmann uses 3 pairs of couples to sing the role of Rodolpho and Mimi, since the roles are so demanding. The three pairs have been dubbed by the media here, “the red, white and blue” cast. I saw the “white cast”, which all the reviews said is overall the strongest pair of singers and actors.

I thought the singing was very good. The only thing I didn’t like was the singers were miked, and you can tell they were miked. For the size of the theatre where La Boheme was performed, microphones were unnecessary and a good opera singer would have been able to be heard without a microphone. In interview, Luhrmann said that microphones were used just so the singers didn’t have to worry about being heard.

What I loved about this version of La Boheme was the costumes, the set, and the activity going on in the background in the café scene. Everyone in background cast, except for the main people were all dressed in shades of gray. Most of the sets were also gray. With the gray costumes and sets, the main characters really stood out when they were on stage. My friend and I immediately thought of the girl in the red dress in the movie “Schindler’s List”. That girl in the red dress really stands out in the movie. Here the color scheme is reversed, but it has the same effect with the main characters standing out so to speak from the crowd.

The best scene was the one where the main characters are in a café in town. There was so much activity going on, and so many background people on stage, that it was hard to actually pay attention to the singing. But all the activity and people really made for a very visually exciting scene, that I’ve never scene before in a musical or an opera. I was reminded of the freneticism of Moulin Rouge.

All the activity and background characters on stage reminded me of watching the new Star Wars movie, “Attack of the Clones”. I saw the movie at a special digital theatre. There was so much going on in the scenes, that sometimes I would start paying attention to something that was happening on the right edge of the screen, and not care about the main action. I had the same thing happen at La Boheme.

If the tickets weren’t so expensive, I would definitely go to La Boheme again to view that one busy scene just to see what I missed the first time around.

Of course, I loved the story in La Boheme. What I got this time around, the tragedy of the ending. How a person can convince themselves that everything will be okay, even when they told themselves earlier that a situation was hopeless. It’s kind of like to get through life, you have to always be hopeful, be an optimist, even if you know that the coming events are going to be unpleasant and unfortunate. This is tragic to me, because it’s like you experience the pain twice over. First, the initial pain of realizing that a certain situation is hopeless, and then the second pain of hoping against hope that the situation is not hopeless, but having your suspicions confirmed at the end. I didn’t cry at the end of La Boheme, but there were people who did so, and that’s always the sign of a good opera.

Other things I liked about Buhrmann’s La Boheme. They had subtitles which were easy to see, but SF Opera does that too. When they were set changes, the audiences sees the set changes and even the director, so it’s kind of like you’re watching movie. The characters are also in freeze position in the beginning, and then come to life when the lights go up. The people who moved the set were also in costume, which I thought was a very nice touch, because then it gave continuity to the whole production.

Some scenes that were slow moving, but as a whole the production moved along very nicely. Baz Luhrmann’s La Boheme adds a modern, young, and visually exciting look to opera, and for that I think Luhrmann should be congratulated.