White Rock Theatre, Monday 8th May 2017
Although Hastings is reasonably close to London it is still something of an effort to attend professional opera in the capital; all the more reason then to welcome touring productions to the White Rock Theatre. Ellen Kent’s company has been touring familiar productions of even more familiar operas for a quarter of a century now and brought La boheme last week.
The presentation was something of a curate’s egg. The orchestral playing under Nicolae Dohotaru was excellent throughout, with the balance and impact always carefully handled and tempi strong enough to maintain the narrative flow. In the conversational sections of the work, which Puccini handles with great skill, the interplay of characters was often convincing but there was a problem with the more familiar arias. To take examples in the first act alone. Vitalii Liskovetskyi may not be an accomplished actor but conveyed the potential innocence of Rodolfo and his naivety towards women with some skill in the opening scene. However, when he came to Che gelida manina he turned up the volume and hurled the aria straight at the audience. The same was true of the final moments of the act. Where Puccini asks his lovers to leave the stage, floating their final notes into the closing night, here they remained centre stage and gave us the full force of their large voices without any subtlety.
Olga Perrier’s personable Musetta suffered in the same way. Her interaction with Iurie Gisca’s convincing Marcello was somewhat spoilt when she played Quando m’en vo straight to the audience as if the crowd on stage did not exist. While the chorus may have had little rehearsal their lack of interaction with the rest of the cast was very noticeable even though they sang convincingly.
The staging itself has certainly seen better days, and there was little sense of place in any of the acts. If it is still being set in the 1830s, why do we see the Eiffel Tower in the second act which was not built until 60 years later?
A little positive attention to detail and a better understanding of the size and acoustic in the White Rock would have resulted in a far more satisfying evening. If this was somebody’s first introduction to opera it may have simply confirmed all their fears.