Review: La Bohème

Marianne Fiset as Mimi (Photo: Yves Renaud)

Bugs clears the aria

L’Opera de Montreal’s new million-dollar La Boheme doesn’t quite make the cut

By Richard “Bugs” Burnett

 Man, I had such high hopes for L’Opera de Montreal’s brand-new season-closing production of Puccini’s masterpiece La Bohème. As its talented director Alain Gauthier told The Charlebois Post in a preview feature story last week, “It’s pretty hard to do a shitty La Bohème… I’m not straying far from the original production of La Bohème, which is beloved by audiences who don’t like it when you mess around with a classic.”

Gauthier didn’t stray far from the original script at all. Problem is, this production – budgeted at a whopping $1.15 million – spent a ton of cash on a new set that never properly served the plot. The central new piece is a factory-window-like backdrop that also doubled as a cheesy silhouette of the 19th-century Paris skyline as seen from dirt-poor bohemian Rodolfo’s unbelievably huge Attic apartment. The rest of the set was essentially made up of steps and several multi-purpose chimneys that made this reporter wonder where all the money was spent.

Feature: Backstage at L'Opéra de Montréal

Antoine Bélanger and Marianne Fiset rehearse the death scene

A Day at the Opera

The Charlebois Post goes backstage for the making of L’Opéra de Montréal’s all-new million-dollar La Boheme

A CharPo exclusive by Richard Burnett

(Photos by Richard Burnett)

Even out of costume, rehearsing Mimi’s death scene in Act 4 of Puccini’s masterpiece La Bohème, the two stars of L’Opera de Montreal’s brand-new production of La Bohème are riveting. Canadian soprano Marianne Fiset, who plays Mimi, and Canadian tenor Antoine Bélanger, who plays Rodolfo, do the scene over and over, in the enormous basement rehearsal studio at Place des Arts. They are accompanied by a pianist, as well as by conductor Giuseppe Petraroia of the Victoria Symphony and La Bohème director Alain Gauthier.

Fiset interrupts the scene and asks the director, “If Rodolfo is telling me he loves me, shouldn’t he be looking at me?” 

Alain Gauthier then takes the place of Antoine Belanger and shows his stars how to do the scene.