Ditching the penguin suits and picnic hampers for affordable tickets and a smart-casual elegance, Glyndebourne’s autumn season opened with Floris Visser’s stylish La Bohème. Seamlessly revived by Rachael Hewer, it not only looks good, it does full justice to Puccini’s classic weepy while finding novel ways to raise the odd goosebump.
Dieuweke van Reij’s set – a metaphorical highway to heaven – serves for all four acts with more than a nod to Brassaï’s noirish photos of 1930s Paris. Bare walls and glistening cobblestones are breathtakingly lit by Alex Brok, while Jon Morrell’s monochrome costumes ooze couture. Visser’s bohemians inhabit a kind of twilight zone, a world of fogs, gendarmes and prostitutes, where the spectre of Death stalks the streets with the consumptive Mimì firmly in his sights.
Whenever Aida Pascu’s spook-haunted seamstress appears, he’s there, a pallid man in black, sitting and staring. Rodolfo senses him, perhaps, but Mimì increasingly sees and fears him. It’s a chillingly effective conceit, played with consummate stillness by Christopher Lemmings. He pops up again as the toy-maker Parpignol, this time grasping an ominous bunch of blood-red balloons. When the lovers declare they will not part until the flowers return in springtime, he draws back a tarpaulin to reveal them already in bloom. Mimì’s final, agonsed cry of “Come here, my love” is delivered not to Rodolfo but to Death himself.
Visser paints precise and visually alluring stage pictures. His endearing students engage in spirited horseplay that for once is tightly crafted and easy to follow. The street scene crackles with energy; Café Momus does a fine line in comedy waiters; crooked policemen turn more than a blind eye to the activities of the local sex workers.
In the pit, musical standards are high. Adam Hickox, son of the late Richard Hickox, has clearly inherited the conducting gene, delivering an incisive account of Puccini’s score that’s crisply alert. A palpable, well-judged elasticity heightens the emotional stakes without ever becoming syrupy. The Glyndebourne Sinfonia responds enthusiastically, as do the lively Glyndebourne Chorus and the fresh voices of Glyndebourne Youth Opera.
Pascu’s abject Mimì is a tender creation, pale, agitated and desperately fragile. Her soprano has just the right degree of mid-register creaminess, although top notes could use a little more body. Andrés Agudelo’s Rodolfo doesn’t always spark. His voice blossoms and fades, sometimes within the same phrase, and he’s inclined to resort to stock operatic gestures.
Aksel Daveyan’s vocal swagger brightens his otherwise taciturn Marcello, making him an excellent foil for Camilla Harris’s assured, feisty and ever-so chic Musetta. Markus Suihkonen shines as Colline, his performance culminating in a moving Coat Aria, with Darwin Prakash a firm-toned, puckish Schaunard and Darren Jeffery turning in delicious cameos as Benoît and Alcindoro.
At Glyndebourne, Sussex, until 2 November.
