Volume
III
Issue 17
Summer 2001
A Night at the Works
by Paul S. Foster
La Bohème
By Giacomo Puccini
Lyrics by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
Based on the French novel by Henri Murger
Premiere, Turin, February 1896
New York City Opera, Lincoln Center
10 March 2001 performance
The opera, La Bohème, music composed by Giacomo Puccini and lyrics by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, based on the French novel by Henri Murger, was first performed in Turin in February 1896. After 105 years of success in every civilized nation on earth where people walk upright and speak a language (the two are not necessarily mutually inclusive), it had its latest performance at the New York City Opera, Lincoln Center. I was there.
The night air was nippy. Patches of the last snow still hugged North walls. Sixty-fifth Street was crowded with people when I surfaced from the Number nine train next to Barnes and Noble. Smartly dressed, sweet-smelling people, brisk walkers all, brisk talkers all, bathing in the wonderful, glorious, glamorous wonder of this wonderful city. The work day over, the office towers now dark and towering over the lights, the traffic, the bustle to get to restaurants, movies, theaters. I, with my US Navy, fifty-times magnification, high-power binoculars, was going to hear Puccini's views on young love, on the fun of living La Vida Loca in Paris, on death. After 105 years, I knew what was coming. One scene you're laughing your head off, and then you're bawling your eyes out. The next drought that we have in New York, I suggest non-stop performances of La Bohème. The collected tears will fill up the reservoirs.
Seat C 111, First Ring. Arts4All is so good to me. I lift my fifty-mag, US Navy binoculars and check out the red hall. A mink to my port, a sable to my starboard. A power pair to my bow, and to my rear a non-stop nasal, like a clarinet with a head cold. He would not shut up about how his doggie, Edward, would not poo poo on his walk no matter how hard he squeezed him. Any dog you named Edward would be too embarrassed to poo poo in public, you pickle! There, mystery solved. Now will you shut up? Fat chance.
ACT ONE. Curtain up on a garret in Paris. Snow falling outside. Alfredo Daza, a baritone, is Marcello, a painter, and Rolando Villazon, a tenor, is Rodolfo, a poet. They're trying to light an iron stove with Rodolfo's manuscript. France has no Scout training, so of course the stove won't light. What's to be done except to sing about a cold stove. And they do. It's not a laugh scene. It's a chuckle and a giggle scene so that the audience is like a tambourine back-up to the quick scherzo.
The program says that BOTH are making their DEBUT? (Oh, boy. Glad I brought the crossword.) Then they sing, my God, and do they ever sing! Energy, spirit, zip. All the youth and high spirits of Puccini's student days, of my student days, hell, of everybody's student days, beguile this red room, redolent of ripe and raunchy ring-around-the-rosie romances. They worked that stage! Well, what's five across, Latin for "work"?
Marcello paints, The Passage of the Red Sea, but his cold hands take revenge by painting, The Drowning of the Pharaoh. Rudolfo burns the pages of his manuscript for heat, laughing at their misery. Baritone and tenor sing a testosterone-powered scherzo that overflows the stage and rolls down the aisles. We clap our hands till they smart. What fun! Is this what they mean when they say, "civilization"? Where has the New York City Opera been keeping these two?
Coline, the philosopher, enters with food and wine. Then Schaunard, the composer, enters with cash he received for teaching French. More fun. It's Christmas Eve, so they'll go to the Café Momus and celebrate.
Ah, but the landlord, Benoit, is at the door for his rent. It's now a question of celebrating or paying the rent. Guess which wins? There's nothing to do but get him drunk, which they do by reminding paunchy old Benoit what a handsome dog he is. Of course, Benoit by now completely agrees with them. Who needs liposuction when half a bottle of Bordeaux can do the trick.
They throw the drunken landlord out. Schaunard sings, "Now we go to the Café Momus in the Latin Quarter." The Latin Quarter, the Sixth Arrondisment, represents youth, freedom, high jinks, student days. The motif is stated with the piccolo, trumpet and glockenspiel. The motif weaves in and out and through the opera, and it's evocative of all the fun of being young and broke. Trust me, I've been to the Student Ball in the Quartier Latin at the Muse Cardinal Mazarin. But now, I'm grown up and sensible. Damn it.
Everyone exits except Rudolfo who stays behind in the garret to write for a few moments. It's quiet. Snow falls outside. It is then that we hear the loveliest theme. It is Mimi's theme. She is the little seamstress who lives upstairs, and now she is in the hall scratching at the door for a light for her candle which blew out.
Boy meets girl, and the dam breaks. Puccini, romantic old devil that he is, shifts gear. Gone the horsing around, he builds and builds the romantic climax to the end of the act with such a flow of lyrical melody that you are as if hit with a stun gun. It is transcendent.
Alors, then, Mimi falls into a coughing fit and collapses. Rudolfo is confused. We're not because we know that Mimi has advanced pulmonary tuberculosis. The clarinet briefly states the theme of her illness. It is repeated throughout when her consumption is made clear. Rudolfo gives Mimi a little wine to revive, and she sings, "Buona sera". She repeats it five times, and it would break the heart of King Kong with its sweet sadness.
Now the full moon rises, and the snow falls, catching its soft light. At the finale of Act I, just to make sure that the lovers' final duet is heard, Puccini reduces the instruments to a mewing chamber orchestra: two flutes, piccolo, two clarinets, harp and muted strings. Maria Kanyova displays a perfectly pitched soprano, as sweet and light as angel food, while Rolando Vilazon parades the full monte of his enormous tenor power. What an ending! What an ending! WHAT an ending.
What is there about opera that compels everyone in a 2,000 seat house, who knows perfectly well the ending, to participate in a collective conspiracy to pretend they don't know the ending. Consequently, the intermission mob hanging around the bar in the lobby, and everyone else too (all two of them), can't contain the excitement. It's not as if it's a surprise that's coming. Is this silly? Is this to squeeze the last cent's worth out of the ticket? Or, is this the tribute we pay to a composer's genius because no matter how often we hear his work, it is always as if for the first time? Wahrheit? Ja, Wahrheit. (Don't look it up. Eight down, Wagnerian truth.)
I came back to C111 to work on the crossword before the curtain went up, and can you believe it? Edward's owner has "borrowed" my high-power binoculars, and he's checking out the house. He smiles sheepishly and hands them back, his finger smudging the lens. I say, "Thanks," as politely as Darth Vader. Oh, I'll get even with that one, wait. There are three more acts.
ACT TWO. Plot-wise, the whole second act can be omitted without losing track of the story. It is just wonderful fun. It takes place in the Café Momus, and a stunning set it is. A huge sign with tiny light bulbs lifts over the stage. A jovial chatter of voices. It is the nature of opera that it can express many comments simultaneously: Marcello, Coline and Shaunard sing about ordering dinner, Rudolfo and Mimi sing about being in love, the kids in the street sing about other things.
Left to Right: George Cordes (Colline), Mel Ulrich (Schaunard), Maria Kanyova (Mimi),
Rolando Villazon (Rodolfo), Alfredo Daza (Marcello), and Nicole Heaston (Musetta)
in Puccini's La Bohème.
Photographer: Carol Rosegg. Image courtesy New York City Opera.
Here, Puccini introduces the character of Musetta, a coquette who dresses in Victoria's Secret street wear. Once upon a time, she and Marcello were lovers. But in the Latin Quarter, that could have been just last week. Now she enters the glittering Café on the arm of a Minister of State, Alcindoro. He is a stock character as old as the Persians: an older rich man who can't control a young lover. Sound familiar? Musetta calls him, "Lulu." He cringes, but that doesn't stop her. Then, she sees Marcello, and she wants him back. Oooh, does she ever want him back.
She crashes her plate to attract Marcello's attention. He won't even turn around. She sends Lulu out to get her another pair of shoes because this pair pinches her feet. (What?) When he leaves, she puts the moves on Marcello and sings him a waltz, "Quando m'en vo...." "When I walk down the streets, everybody turns to admire my beauty...," and she moves around Marcello like her bones are oiled. She's gonna get this man if it kills her.
Nicole Heaston as Musetta is at the top of her form. A gusty, lusty, feisty, tasty soprano. She is also making her debut. That's three debuts. Forget a star is born, this is a super nova. If City Opera keeps this up, they should switch their venue to the Hayden Planetarium.
The bill comes and the five bohemians, Schaunard, Coline, Rudolfo, Marcello and Mimi can't pay it. Musetta takes the bill and gives it to the waiter, "When the old gent comes back, tell him to add it to his bill." Everybody exits singing the praises of Musetta, "...the sweetheart of the Latin Quarter." Musetta got her man. Mimi got a new bonnet. The bohemians got a free dinner, and Alcindoro got the bill. Everybody's happy.
Well, everybody except the dog squeezer/binoc smudger who whispers like a clarinet in the row behind me. The applause dies down. I stare at the stage with my high-power binocs. I laugh theatrically to my neighbor and hand her the binoculars, "Quick, see what the button says that Musetta pinned on her collar?" The dog squeezer/binoc smudger is near hysteria, "What? What was it? I didn't see any button?" Coolly as an Eskimo Pie, says I, "You didn't? Pity. It's the funniest part of the second act."
ACT THREE. A toll gate leading to the Latin Quarter. Cold. A brilliantly effective passage sets the scene. All the coldness of Paris on a winter's dawn is stated in a few bars for flutes and harp. It is an icicle-sound to which he adds the brittleness of the steel triangle. Then a bit of Musetta's waltz breaks into the icicle music. She's in a tavern giving "singing lessons" at four o'clock in the morning. Yeah, right.
The gate guard lets in milk-sellers, farm women with cabbages, etc. - a quick musical sketch of a city waking up. Then the whole mood changes when strings play, "Mi chiamano Mimi." Mimi shivers in the shadows. It's now daylight, a sad, foggy winter's day. Marcello and Musetta are living together in this part of Paris. Marcello comes out of the tavern to bring Mimi inside. She won't go in because Rudolfo is also inside.
This is the first really passionate, not sentimental, music so far. She mixes passion and despair. She says that Rudolfo loves her, but he is insanely jealous. Mimi coughs uncontrollably and hides as Rudolfo enters. Now Marcello hears the other side of the story. Rudolfo tells him that he is afraid, that Mimi is seriously ill and grows worse every day. Mimi is dying. He blames himself, his poverty and squalid living conditions for her worsening state. "Love alone is not enough to bring her back to life," he sings con stanchezza, "with tiredness." Alas, Mimi overhears his diagnosis. Her coughs and sobs give her away. Rodolfo rushes to her and gathers her in his arms.
Marcello stomps into the tavern when he hears Musetta laughing, "What's she up to now?"
The lovers are alone. Mimi sings her farewell. She sings it is best we part. Wrap up my things. Someone will call for them, but keep the bonnet you bought for me at Christmas to remind you of our love. We part with no bitterness, "Addio senza rancor." She sings about the things that meant so much to them, "Addio, dolce svegliare alla mattina...Goodbye to that sweet waking up in the morning next to you...." This is not a love duet, it contains too much sadness. They are young and romantically twined, but now wiser, a moving scene tinged with the melancholy and regret that things cannot go on forever.
The duet becomes a strange quartet when Musetta and Marcello appear on the tavern steps shouting and snapping at each other. The quartet blends romance and comedy, but then becomes a duet again when Musetta shouts a final insult, and Marcello chases her off the stage. What a pair! He quiddles while she fiddles.
Maria
Kanyova (Mimi) and Rolando Villazon (Rodolfo) in Puccini's La Bohème.
Photographer: Carol Rosegg. Image courtesy New York City Opera.
The final passage is the most irresistible moment in all opera. Villazon and Kanyova are superb together. To anyone who has ever been in love or even fantasized about this quintessentially human emotion, Puccini has set it to music in the last few pages of this third act.
In the final act, Mimi expires in the garret with all her friends around her. Musetta hocks her earrings to pay for medicine, but it arrives too late to do any good. The curtain falls as Rudolfo throws himself down at Mimi's bedside, grief-stricken, while the orchestra plays the theme she sang earlier. The authenticity of the moment leaves us stunned.
About the Author:
Paul Foster is a regular contributor to the Newsletter. His articles include a review of Le Nozze di Figaro at New York City Opera, and Forbidden Theater, a memoir-commentary about his travails as a playwright battling for free expression in 1970's Romania and Brazil.
Co-founder of La Mama Theater, Foster is an award-winning author of eighteen Broadway and Off-Broadway plays. His work has been seen in numerous television and film scripts and he has fourteen books published in several languages. Foster has won NEA, NEH, Rockefeller, Guggenheim, British Arts Council and Irish Universities Fellowships and Awards. The Paul Foster Theatrical Collection can be found at Rutgers University, Alexander Library, New Brunswick, NJ.
Resources:
Foster reviewed the 10 March 2001 performance of La Bohème at the New York City Opera, Lincoln Center, New York. For details on the New York City Opera's production of La Bohème and the rest of their 2000-2001 season, visit their website at http://www.nycopera.com
A brief bio of Giacomo Puccini can also be found at http://www.nycopera.com/season/this/composer.cfm?OperaID=3
Visit the Newsletter's Artist Pages to hear lyric soprano Vanessa Conlin perform Quando m'en vo from La Bohème.