US Edition 
La Bohème, Opera North, Grand Theatre, Leeds, review: 'hits hard'
Opera North's La Bohème has impassioned performances and a beguiling score, says Rupert Christiansen
Years ago I queued all night outside at the Met to hear Freni and Domingo in La Bohème, staged in Zeffirelli’s blockbuster production conducted by James Levine.
I got in, but alas, it wasn’t worth the effort: the performance fell flat, because this isn’t an opera which takes kindly to big stars and flash sets. What it feeds on instead is a sense that when you’re young and in love being poor doesn’t matter – until a sharp shock informs you that life is actually a tragically intractable business without second chances.
This is precisely where Phyllida Lloyd’s production for Opera North – first seen in 1993 and now attentively revived by Michael Barker-Carven – scores bull’s eye. Gently updating the setting to the Saint–Germain of the 1950s, it starts in the style of a student bedsit romcom, as Marcello gaily splashes paint over an American Abstract canvas and Rodolfo thinks that love must be a breeze. Being cold and hungry in conditions of post-war austerity is only a bit of a laugh: something you can outwit, something that doesn’t hurt.
Lloyd and her designer Anthony Ward have cleverly solved the more technical problems posed by the libretto (particularly the inside-outside nature of Acts two and three), and don’t overload the drama with period detail. More important, their light-touch approach allows the opera’s last 10 minutes to hit hard: Rodolfo has his nasty bust-up with Mimi, but with the help of his chums, he bounces back. Surely that nagging cough of hers couldn’t be anything fatal?
When the orchestra delivers its appalled yes, you could have heard a pin drop in the Grand Theatre, Leeds. Most of the audience, I guess, were new to opera, and genuinely startled and moved by Mimi’s decline and Rodolfo’s panic.
Here the performances of Anita Watson and Ji-Min Park were at their impassioned best: earlier in the evening, she had sounded shrill and nervous, and he had forced his tone. Both are trying too hard, and need to relax. But there’s excellent singing from Duncan Rock, both virile and sensitive as Marcello, and a strongly characterised Colline and Schaunard from Barnaby Rea and John Savournin.
Most exciting of all was the conducting of Ilyich Rivas: only 20 years old, he is clearly beguiled by the glowing colours and emotional density of this inexhaustibly beguiling score. Ah, youth!
Until 10 May. Phone 0113 243 9999; www.operanorth.co.uk