Giacomo Puccini’s opera, directed by Eric Ruf and conducted by Lorenzo Passerini, is thrilling with its dramatic tension and lightness. Soprano Selene Zanetti and tenor Pene Pati are breathtaking.
It’s a triumph. The public began to show their joy, their enthusiasm from the first scene. At the applause meter, Bohemian by Giacomo Puccini breaks all records. The performance of the artists, in particular those of Selene Zanetti and Pene Pati who embody the couple in love Rodolfo the penniless poet and Mimi the neighbor seamstress, triggered thunderous applause on several occasions before a long final ovation. The tenor, originally from the Samoan Islands, transports his audience with his voice that is both powerful and envelopingly soft. Indeed, Pene Pati creates this link, both fragile and solid, which deeply moves his audience. What about the crystalline voice of Selene Zanetti? This couple is overwhelmingly authentic.
The bohemian life
The show opens with an attic where Rodolfo and his friend Marcello, a painter, are shivering with cold. They fail to work. Rodolfo decides to burn his manuscript to keep warm. They are hungry and thirsty. The poet and the painter, soon joined by their comrades Colline the philosopher and Schaunard the musician, are driven by dreams, joy but penniless. It’s the life of bohemians, these broke artists who are satisfied with little while imagining a better world. We are in Paris, in 1830. Bohemianopera in four scenes, by Giacomo Puccini, on a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, is inspired by the novel by Henri Murger, Scenes from bohemian life. Giacomo Puccini had his librettists rewrite the text several times. Puccini’s fourth opera, Bohemian has become one of the masterpieces of Italian opera.
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Bohemian, it is also two love stories: the internalized and condemned one of Mimi and Rodolfo and the exuberant one of Marcello and the whimsical Musetta. These thwarted loves tell the society of the time, and are a mirror held up to the present. Alexandre Duhamel, Francesco Salvadori, Guillaume Worms and Amina Edris transcended their roles. We laugh, we have fun and we cry with the characters. This is Puccini’s strength: dramatic intensity and lyrical generosity. Linked love and death, simultaneous joy and sadness, laughter and tears, precariousness and wealth, Bohemian is an opera of life.
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The efficient staging of Eric Ruf and the orchestral direction of Lorenzo Passerini give another dimension to the opera. The show is fluid, dense, striking. Bohemian, an opera not to be missed.
Form
Title : Bohemian
Duration : 50mn – Intermission (30mn) – 55mn
Until July 24 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées
Distribution
Lorenzo Passerini | direction
Eric Ruf | staging and scenography
Glyslein Lefever | choreography
Christian Lacroix | suits
Bertrand Couderc | light
Selene Zanetti | Mimi
Pene Pati | Rodolfo
Alexandre Duhamel | marcello
Francesco Salvadori | Schaunard
Guilhem Worms | Hill
Amina Edris | Musetta
Marc Labonnet | Alcindoro / Benedict
Rodolphe Briand | Parpignol
National Orchestra of France
Unikanti Choir, Choir of Hauts-de-Seine| directed by Gael Darchen
Opera sung in Italian, surtitled in French and English