Review: (Toronto) La Bohème

(photo by Michael Cooper)

Young Love
by Shannon Christy

Remember those days when you would walk in the rain just to see a glimpse of someone you loved.  The days before you became cynical and still thought that you could make a difference.  That your ideals could change the world and that your efforts would have a lasting impact.  Well regardless of whether you remember those days fondly or not, La Bohème is the opera for you.  It is even better if you can have those memories accompanied by some outstanding vocal performances and this production of La Bohème does just that. 

La Bohème is about six young people struggling to find their way in Paris.  The four men are honing their crafts as a painter, a poet, a philosopher, and a musician and they are flat broke.  The two women are a seamstress and a grisette and they seem better off as they have discovered the material advantages their bodies can provide.  However, the women are dissatisfied with the notion of trading material goods for men with hands as cold as ice and they attempt to have the best of both worlds by falling in love with two of the young men while accepting the material gifts of their older patrons.  There is a lightness about the opera, with the exception that one character suffers from a terminal illness, and even though tempers flair, insults are hurled, and anger boils over it seems light and ephemeral just like the loves of one’s youth. 

Sunday Feature: First-Person - Baritone Phillip Addis on performing two roles (La Bohème)

(photo by Kristin Hoebermann)

Parallel Existence

by Phillip Addis

A rising star on the international stage, Canadian baritone Phillip Addis has performed in opera, concerts and recitals throughout Canada, the United States, Europe and Japan. He’s been called “a star in the making” (MusicOMH) and praised for his creamy, bright, smooth voice as much as for his spell-binding, daring, yet sensitive interpretations.  He makes his Canadian Opera Company debut in the company’s production of La Bohème this October, singing the role of the musician Schaunard and the  painter Marcello.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I can only really be in one place at a time, both physically and mentally.  While I have different roles to play in life I can only really be in one of those roles in a given moment. Normally this would be true of the roles that I play on stage as well, but I have been working with a curious predicament these past few weeks in preparation for the Canadian Opera Company's production of La Bohème.  I have had the great fortune to be given two roles to prepare; that of Marcello, the painter and of Schaunard, the musician.

Review: (Ottawa) La Bohème

Michael Fabiano and Joyce El-Khoury (photo credit: Sam Garcia/OLO)

From Rent to La Vie Bohème

The joyous return of Opera Lyra

by Jim Murchison

Saturday evening at Southam Hall marked the return of Opera Lyra after a year of hiatus brought on by financial difficulties. Now even people that have never been to the opera are aware of  La Bohème because of the phenomenal success of the modern musical it inspired: Rent. The other thing that the two pieces have in common is that very few people feel halfway about them. People love or hate Rent and the same thing can be said of opera. I would never be able to convert a zealot one way or the other, but here's the thing: many people that don't like opera have never been to an opera. If you have only ever heard opera on record or seen a production on the CBC it is not the same as going to the opera. Theatre and opera do not play well on television.

Review: (Toronto) La Bohème

La Bohème, the Canadian way 

The sound of preconceptions falling...

by Axel Van Chee

I have a confession to make: Puccini’s La Bohème occupies the crowning spot on my “Top Ten Most Hated Opera List”, and I have seen more than 20 productions of it in different opera houses to continue to justify my belief. Why I still keep seeing it is a subject for another debate, but it was with trepidation that I went to the production put on by Against the Grain Theater billed as “A modern love tale told in English”. After all, not only is it my most hated opera, it is stripped to the bare bones, updated by a few decades, with a brand new libretto in English, and all crammed into a bar while a blue grass concert is playing right next door through very thin walls. Two hours later, I must admit that I had, possibly, one of the most entertaining evenings I’ve ever had at an opera.