{"id":29221,"date":"2014-04-27T00:37:39","date_gmt":"2014-04-27T07:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=29221"},"modified":"2014-05-08T01:47:29","modified_gmt":"2014-05-08T08:47:29","slug":"la-boheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=29221","title":{"rendered":"La Boh\u00e8me"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"La<\/a>
La Boh\u00e8me – Rodolfo and friends\/Photo: Yossi Zwecker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On a modern-day sitcom, they could have been a group of twentysomethings living in New York. In Puccini\u2019s opera La Boh\u00e8me<\/em>, the writer Rodolfo and his friends Marcello, Musetta, Schaunard and Colline are \u201cBohemians\u201d: starving artists who walk the road less traveled by in society. In their freezing apartments, they write, compose, and paint for their wages, and they spend most of those at the local coffee house, Caf\u00e9 Momus. They deal with things known to some of us: angry landlords, dark staircases and writer\u2019s block. With every trouble that comes along they deal with humor, calm and a splash of deceit. At the garret, when the landlord shows up, they artfully distract him and then kick him out; later at Caf\u00e9 Momus, when given a mile-long bill that should definitely not be figured out by a group of writers and artists without a calculator, Musetta simply puts the whole thing on her ex-boyfriend\u2019s tab and they merrily run off, leaving him sputtering in anger. Rodolfo, our protagonist, spends most of Act I in an entertaining mutual flirtation with Mim\u00ec, his neighbor, and the two fall in love.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"La<\/a>
La Boh\u00e8me – at the cafe\/Photo: Yossi Zwecker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But this gaiety is not to last. If the first half of the opera presents to the audience a poor but altogether happy group, the second half shows the cruel and unstoppable harm which their no longer charming poverty can bring. Mim\u00ec is burdened by consumption, and even as Marcello and Colline are out pawning their belongings to bring her some last comforts, she dies in Rodolfo\u2019s cold garret \u2013 a fate we knew was coming, but which still manages, in those final moments, to shock.<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a>
La Boh\u00e8me – Mimi (Ira Bertman) and Rodolfo (Jose Bros) in their final tender moments\/Photo: Yossi Zwecker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In his Israeli Opera debut, Spanish tenor Jose Bros is a good Rodolfo, with a smooth voice and even, beautiful pianos. Opposite, Ira Bertman, as Mim\u00ec, sounds better than ever, especially in the Act I aria \u201cS\u00ec, mi chiamano Mim\u00ec\u201d, in which she introduces herself to Rodolfo. Their voices blend well for the duet, \u201cO soave fanciulla\u201d.<\/p>\n

Alla Vasilevitsky is superbly in character as Musetta, issuing commands to her elderly companion Alcindoro and tormenting her former lover Marcello. She sings the Waltz (\u201cQuando m\u2019en vo\u2019\u201d) magnificently, with the appearance of a cat slinking towards her prey and sinking her claws into it.<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a>
La Boh\u00e8me – Alla Vasilevitsky as Musetta\/Photo: Yossi Zwecker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the roles of Alcindoro and of Beno\u00eet, the landlord, Guy Mannheim continues to impress with his comic abilities. Carlo Striuli, another regular at the Israel Opera, beautifully delivers Colline\u2019s Coat Aria, a farewell to his old coat, which he pawns in order to pay for Mim\u00ec\u2019s medicine.<\/p>\n

\"Daniel<\/a>
Daniel Oren\/Photo: Yossi Zwecker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Daniel Oren is one of those conductors who can breathe new life into a score, and this performance is no exception \u2013 Puccini\u2019s little trills and long legato lines seem especially exciting under Maestro Oren\u2019s baton. He comes home to Israel for precious few performances, and it\u2019s always a memorable experience to listen (and, if you happen to be sitting close enough, watch!) a great master of music at work.<\/p>\n

Director Stefano Mazzonis di Pralafera has become a household name in Israel. Just like his Otello and La Traviata, this production brings out the large chorus and concertato scenes with aplomb, though perhaps the stage is a bit too small to hold them. He places the garret on a rickety building covered with even less sturdy scaffolding, and we can see the grubby street below. This makes the Act I love scene somewhat less intimate, less warm, but the final scene of the opera is so poignantly staged that intimacy is restored: in a tableau following the libretto\u2019s last lines, we see the lifeless Mim\u00ec on her bed, Rodolfo grabbing the railing desperately as he looks away from her and out the window, and the rest of the group embraced in a circle.<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a>
La Boh\u00e8me\/Photo: Yossi Zwecker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Performances of La Boh\u00e8me<\/em> at the Israel Opera will continue until May 10. A pre-performance lecture (in Hebrew) will be held one hour before every performance, and on selected evenings there will be an Opera Talkback session, in which you can discuss the performance with the singers.<\/p>\n

For performance dates, times, additional details and tickets, call the Israel Opera at 03-692-7777 or visit www.israel-opera.co.il<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a modern-day sitcom, they could have been a group of twentysomethings living in New York. In Puccini\u2019s opera La Boh\u00e8me, the writer Rodolfo and his friends Marcello, Musetta, Schaunard and Colline are \u201cBohemians\u201d: starving artists who walk the road less traveled by in society. In their freezing apartments, they write, compose, and paint for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}