Reviews
LA BOHEME

Puccini a smash hit in the suburbs

Co-Opera, South Australia's other professional opera company, is very much at home in Golden Grove. This low-budget and imaginative performance of the Puccini tearjerker displays all this young company's strengths. It is energetic, well conceived and executed and, above all, finely sung. The cast includes several young singers making a national reputation for themselves on the vocal competition circuit. Director Tessa Bremner has relocated the Parisian band of artists and students to Melbourne at the end of World War II, and included subtle visual references and some slight rewriting of the English libretto. The performance, cabaret style and in the round, is aided by surprisingly warm acoustics in the arts centre, which otherwise resembles a barn more than a theatre. But the production is designed for touring, and the cast works hard to ensure the story is communicated directly. I've seen this production before and was pleased to see that the cast grows in strength with every performance. The surprise of the night was the Marcello of David Perry, a new member of the company making his debut in a principal role, having been for some years a member of the State Opera chorus. He has a voice of impressive range and colour, beautifully managed. He doesn't project as strong a character as the other performance but this should come with time. His pairing with Tasso Bouyessis, the ardent Rudolfo, was musically most satisfying in their last-act duet. Jillian Chatterton's willowy and frail Mimi was intelligently contrasted with Teresa La Rocca's voluptuous Musetta. As Colline and Schaunard, Robert England and Peter Dean fleshed out their character with great skill, and Timothy Marks made an enterprising double act of Benolt and Alcindoro, in this production a GI on R. There's small chorus of support and a handful of local children as well, to add variety to the action.

At the upright piano, Brian Chatterton provided sterling support, handing over one of the production's most audacious aspects to Peter Deane, who accompanied Musetta's waltz song on piano accordion.

The predominantly local audience responded enthusiastically. This performance was the first of a season of three operas to be presented by the company this month. Pagliacci and The Magic Flute are to come. Bring a plate.

Ewart Shaw, The Adelaide Advertiser, Saturday 28 Oct 1995.

Boheme wins at winery

The Peter Lehmann Winery at Tanunda has been the venue for many musical events since the advent of the Barossa Musical Festival.

The presentation of La Boheme has provided another new dimension for music lovers. The Co-Opera production played to a packed and enthusiastic house. Instead of the usual rows of seats, the audience was placed in a more cabaret-like atmosphere with tables and chair, and everyone had brought along food and refreshments (local wine being the clear beverage of choice). One could imagine that the opera was actually being staged in the Café Momus.

Certainly, Co-Opera's production showed an ample amount of verve and exuberance. Despite the rather small space that the cast was given to work within, there was still plenty of movement.

There were a number of striking elements to the production, but none more so than the accordion played of Peter Deane during Act II in the café. This was an unexpected moment that added a special bit of spice to the production. Of course, the reduction of Puccini's score to the piano is always going to involve some loss of colour, but this was minimized by the expressive playing of Brian Chatterton who deserves a great deal of credit for his musical direction as well.

What this performance really had in its favour was a sense of youthful exuberance. This is no small advantage in an opera such as La Boheme.

Dramatically, there were a number of very pleasing performances including those of David Perry, Peter Deane and Darian Johns. But especially enjoyable was the singing and acting of Imogen Roose. She was able to provide that spark that made her character really jump beyond the boundaries of a simple portrayal. At times she really made one believe she was Musetta. Kenneth Marshall had the task of filling three separate roles, and in doing so demonstrated how versatile he is both vocally and dramatically.

The idea of setting the opera in Melbourne during the Angry Penguins era was an interesting notion. References to St. Kilda and so forth, caused one to prick up one's ears and pay attention, and this helped to engage the audience with the action .And it also made the use of the English language translation of the libretto seem appropriate.

Opera Opera, October 2000.

Audience part of the show

Co-Opera is the professional South Australian based company which over the past three years has taken imaginative cabaret-style presentation of favourite operas to small and often unusual venues.

On its initial visit to Canberra, the company presented La Boheme "in the round" in the cabaret atmosphere of the Italo-Australian Club. In an imaginative adaptation to these surroundings by producer Tessa Bremner it worked very effectively.

It is played on two stepped platforms set in the centre of an audience seated at tables and thus involved in the performance as singers made entrances and exits through them. Indeed, in the second act's Café Momus setting, member of the audience become patrons of the café.

This personal approach provides an intimate and most enjoyable if somewhat unusual operatic experience. Although a piano - sympathetically played by musical director Brian Chatterton - provides the sole accompaniment, the singing is so strong and vital that the lack of orchestral sound is not a particular drawback.

Young voices in young roles is just what this opera demands, and Jillian Chatterton as Mimi and Tasso Bouyessis as Rudolfo made a well-matched pair of lovers. Grant Doyle was outstanding and Teresa La Rocca was a voluptuous and fiery Musetta.

With equally strong support from Robert England as Colline and Timothy Marks doubling as Benoir and Alcindoro, together with lively contributions from the five-member chorus, this was a most entertaining and very enjoyable presentation of Boheme.

W. Hoffmann, Tug Comm Arts, 1996.

Puccini back with the people

Some time later this month I'm going to tick a couple of boxes and send a form away that will commit me to several hundred, if not a couple of thousand dollars worth of debt.

Such is my love of the opera that I will spend that money gladly, knowing that in return I will spend five nights in Sydney next year, watching some of the finest performances the Australian Opera has to offer.

Go ahead, accuse me of elitism, sneer at me when I moan about the cost, it doesn't matter.

When I hear Mimi and Rodolfo in duet at the end of the first act of La Boheme, nothing else matters.

I've seen the Australian Opera do Boheme at he Opera House in Sydney. I've heard Marilla Freni and Luciano Pavarotti sing it on CD. To me, Puccini's music is proof that there is a God. Such a sound could not be invented by a mere mortal.

But until last week, I'd always baulked at opera that wasn't performed by artists with a minimum standing of membership of the AO. I'd been stung by a couple of local productions over the years. No doubt the companies and artists were motivated by high ideals, but what we saw and what they intended were at times embarrassingly divergent.

We attend these productions because it is "A Good Thing" to encourage local artists and production companies, who, let's face it, have to begin somewhere before they become great, but one rarely if ever expects to have one's socks rocked off.

Do when Dominic Mico invited me to the Italo-Australian Club last week to watch a touring company do La Boheme in the round, I was more motivated more by a sense duty to encourage a local producer to bring opera to Canberra than any idea that I would be knocked out by the standard of the performance.

South Australia's Co-Opera came to town for a single performance of my favourite opera. With only half a dozen or so in the cast and just one piano as a musical accompaniment, I'd almost written it off before the first note was sung.

I now publicly apologise to Dominic Mico for such a patronising attitude.

What we saw was simply magic. This was an opera company that worked within its technical limits. It didn't have hundreds of people on stage to create the market scene of Act II, so it used the audience to create an ambience of chaotic fun, the like of which Canberrans only ever see at 4:55pm at the Fyshwick Markets on a Sunday afternoon.

But unlike the "audience participation" routines of most theatre restaurants that have patrons cowering in fear of being the bunny embarrassed into participating, this cast worked the room so well that patrons became willing participants.

The beauty of this production is that it took opera back to its roots, back to the people. These days we automatically associate opera with $100 tickets, formal attire and snobbish conversations. When you pay $100 for a ticket to an opera at the Sydney Opera House, you're paying for a symphony orchestra in the pit, you're paying for the huge staff it takes to manage the enormous stage and the complicated sets, you're paying for the ornate costumes which dazzle even those in the nose-bleeding cheap seats, you're paying to see one of the finest opera companies in the world.

What we paid for at the Italian club the other night was for one guy to play the piano while six or so others sang their hearts out on a few humble platforms that constituted the stage. Oh, and a plate of pasta the likes of which you can really only eat at the Italian club.

The point of all this is to encourage others who may be wavering about opera to have a go the next time it comes to town.
Don't sit back and say that because you've seen it on TV and didn't like it that therefore you don't like opera. The only way to experience opera is to see it live.

Dominic Mico is bringing to same company back in November for a performance of Carmen.

Tickets will sell out if the response of last week's audience is anything to go by.

Mark Wallace

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