Mercury Opera Stages Grand Puccini in Strangest Space Yet – a Legit Theatre!
It’s not that Mercury Opera impresario Darcia Parada hasn’t produced Puccini’s beloved potboiler La Boheme in strange venues before. Back in 1994 she staged Act I of the heartrending opera in a loft in New York’s Tribecca neighbourhood. The producer-opera singer-designer-international entrepreneur has made a career out of staging grand opera in exotic locales (which has included subway stations, flatbed trucks, and amusement parks).
Their current offering of La Boheme runs in the Citadel’s Rice Theatre through March 14 – on its way to an Off-Broadway production in New York down the road.
Last year, we attended Mercury’s production of Bizet’s Carmen. It began in the tiny Commodore Restaurant on Jasper Avenue and moved, after Act I, audience and all, to the Chez Pierre strip club up the street. So, was this a stunt? It certainly was, but it was also an entertaining evening of opera staged with panache and slick professionalism by a company that respected the material. In my review I noted that “the staging was inventive and quite funny.” So the company was certainly in on the joke, but the production was sure-handed and featured distinguished artists from New York, Latin America and Edmonton. The force of their trained operatic vocal projection in the small cafe was quite overpowering.
The story in La Boheme is of the love of Mimi and Rodolfo, and of Marcello and Musetta – and of their friends, a group of rag-tag poets and artists living in great poverty in a garret in the Paris of 1830. In the current production, the New York of 1979 substitutes for Paris, and the motley assortment of destitute 19th Century artistes now live in a city of disco, drag, punk rock and poetry. Somewhat surprisingly the Big Apple proves to be a valid mirror for the social and economic realities of the Paris of 150 years before.
And no, they don’t turn Puccini’s soaring score into the catalogue of the Sex Pistols. The opera contains some of the most ravishing arias ever penned. What a Cold Little Hand sung by Rodolfo (Glenn Seven Allen) and Mimi’s (Kate Fruchterman) gentle reply, Yes, They Call Me Mimi, retain their heart-tugging power. The famous duet between the two, O Gentle Maiden, survives the familiarity of many recordings to maintain a degree of freshness. The big showpiece of Act II is Musetta’s Waltz, sung with take-no-prisoners gusto by soprano Stacy Dove. Another stand-out is the splendid quartet Goodbye, Sweet Awakening, where Rodolfo and Mimi declare their love, while Marcello and Musetta quarrel in the background.
One of Rodolfo’s buddies Schaunard is roundly played by Ian Fundytus as an Amazonian gay complete with red leather jacket, miniskirt and net stockings. He-she gets to deliver a hilarious, fully Italian version of Santa Baby.
Of course, this being grand opera, the ending is unutterably sad – depending on how much you have surrendered yourself to the considerable blandishments of the work.
The small size of the Rice Theatre helps. The “grand” of “Grand Opera” remains, but the proximity generates a kind of intimacy and depth of feeling not found in the great halls of the world. At one point the cast fans out through the audience, singing with operatic fervour, enveloping you in the luxurious passion from all sides. Conductor Martin Yazdzik, exhibiting his extensive international career in opera and musical theatre, pulls a fat sound out of his sextet of yeoman musicians while showing empathy for the demands of accompaniment.
As usual with Mercury Opera, the performers are seasoned and skillful. Glenn Seven Allen has been busy playing both operatic roles and leads on Broadway (The Light In the Piazza). He brings a stage actor’s subtle performance combined with a robust tenor and ringing top notes. Fruchterman (at the beginning of a promising career but with many roles already in her repertoire – this is her first Mimi) brings an ethereal beauty and affective vulnerability to the doomed street urchin. Edward Cleary is muscular and headstrong as Marcello and is evenly matched in talent and stage presence with Dove as the fiery Musetta. The heartfelt delivery of her big anthem of independence When I Walk Alone is charming, more than a bit playful, and a high point of the evening.
The set, representing various places in New York (Chelsea Hotel, an East Village tenement), is spread throughout the theatre. The direction by Parada is ingenious, often quite funny while avoiding anything that would outrage the most unbending of purists. The only problem with the evening are the surtitles which are projected on a square screen high above the actor’s heads so you have to watch one or the other.
This fully realized but salon-sized version of a classic opera was exceedingly well served by an accomplished production featuring an attractive cast of singers who really looked and sounded like hapless young people grappling with life’s pleasures and pain. Puccini is never very cheerful, but this opera is a shimmering concoction of exquisite beauty.
