Superb Puccini rises above outdoor woes

OPERA

La Boheme

WA Opera

Supreme Court Gardens

4 Stars

REVIEW WILLIAM YEOMAN

The sound was a tad too loud, the vision mixing occasionally awkward, the mozzies annoying and somebody sitting behind me just couldn’t shut up. But Saturday night’s free Opera in the Park performance of La Boheme was one of the best I’ve seen.

Puccini’s classic tale of love and loss, in which poet Rodolfo (Paul O’Neill) falls in love with consumptive Mimi (Elena Perroni) while sharing digs with Marcello (James Clayton), Schaunard (Mark Alderson) and Colline (Paull-Anthony Keightley), a merry band soon joined by Marcello’s on-again-off-again girlfriend Musetta (Rachelle Durkin), requires a light touch and deep understanding.

Which is what the near-capacity crowd (almost 20,000, not to mention those enjoying live streaming across the State) got here, with director Stuart Maunder and WA Opera conductor Brad Cohen inspiring soloists, the WA Symphony Orchestra and Chorus alike to surmount every difficulty an amplified and televised outdoor performance might present.

Actually, a lot of those difficulties became virtues. Being miked up allowed the soloists a greater range of dynamic shading; being seen on the big screen, with the shots so expertly lit and framed, allowed a greater subtlety of expression.

Perroni — whose doomed Mimi you couldn’t help compare to one of Modigliani’s melancholy women — and O’Neill were especially good here. Sometimes you even felt like you were watching a piece of Italian neo-realist cinema. Their Che gelida manina, Mi chiamano Mimi and O Soave fanciulla were quite magnificent.

But really, everyone was terrific. O’Neill, Clayton, Alderson and Keightley are so utterly at home in these roles now, and in working with each other, that their joys and despairs, their laughter and their tears, seemed genuine.

As Musetta, Rachelle Durkin’s flirting and hamming it up, her delicious Musetta’s Waltz and her final-act anguish and despair proved yet what a talented and marvellously versatile actress and singer she is.

This was Perroni’s first professional engagement in her home town after years abroad studying at the prestigious Curtis Institute in the US and performing in Europe. As Mimi, she did not disappoint, her soprano so full and flexible, yet so capable of expressing fragility and mortality without incongruity.

The WA Orchestra and Chorus, the latter enhanced by a cheeky children’s chorus, were also above reproach, despite having to compete with a live band across the road. All in all, a night to remember.