This new production bravely pulls the Puccini favourite into the present day, but could have raised the bar further

Post-pandemic, a director could approach Puccini’s most popular and culturally appropriated opera in one of two ways: either choose a contemporary interpretation, exploiting the parallels between 1830s Paris and a group of struggling 2020s artists unable to pay their energy bills while watching a loved one die from a respiratory virus; or expunge these present-day comparisons and escape into the conventional romanticism of Puccini’s soaring score and 19th-century melodrama.

While one may crave the latter in the current, troubled climate, director Mathilda du Tillieul McNicol goes for the former and braver option. Similarly to David McVicar’s ripped-jeans-and-hoodie revival of Bohème at Glyndebourne in 2011, our four starving artists are here in a non-specified contemporary world. They wear converse trainers and Hawaiian shirts, live in what looks like an eco-prefab and face Christmas Eve among kids in a Westfield shopping mall.

There is something distinctly ordinary about these proceedings. The setting is plain and grey, which has an oddly dichotomous effect: lifting the music outside its environs, putting the arias and ensemble work from the youthful cast into relief, but also often becoming visceral, deeply moving and raw. Together with the excellent Manchester Camerata, conducted by NHO’s Artistic Director Nicholas Chalmers, the piece at times feels faultless.

Bohème often polarises opinion. It did when it premiered in Turin in 1896. Benjamin Britten castigated it as overly simplistic, and yet it has indelibly endured. Here, the tale of the poverty-stricken lovers who stumble upon each other during a power-cut feels like Jonathan Larson’s Rent. We see seamstress Mimi seeking candlelight from her poet neighbour Rodolfo, fuelling a narrative rush of love at first sight. Ever present is the spectre of Mimi’s tuberculosis. The lovers, absorbed by their spirited community of fellow artists, struggle to maintain a relationship, trying and ultimately failing to avoid the inevitability of Mimi’s death.

Basia Bińkowska’s set feels like a continuation of Nevill Holt’s award-winning Witherford Watson Mann auditorium: clean lines, modern materials, nothing extra. The prefabricated rectangle that forms the students’ flat, Café Momus and their work space sits within the exposed brick box of the stage. Mimi manipulates the space, navigating some very worrying enormous sliding doors, guiding the action into interior intimacy or leaving it shivering outside in the snow.

Despite the welcome decision to integrate some energetic work from local school children playing Act II’s street chorus, this production is led by its performers, not its direction. Nigerian-American soprano Francesca Chiejina’s is a superior Mimi, soaring above the score. Soprano Alexandra Oomens has the sass for Musetta, replete in Sergeant Pepper jacket and glitter boots. 

And baritone Dominic Sedgwick is a stand-out as the philosopher Schaunard, his dark vocal resonance and charisma proving he is someone to watch. Peter Scott Drackley’s Rodolfo, Christopher Nairne’s Marcello and Dingle Yandell’s Colline are all strong. This is a team of excellent young singers sensitively working together, and they make the finale truly moving.

Visiting Nevill Holt Opera is a five-star experience, from the staggering house and superb gardens, to the Antony Gormley and Nic Fiddian-Green sculptures. But this opening production could have gone to greater lengths to match it. There is a distinct lack of edge, of a commitment to deconstructing the opera, that leaves the performers unsupported. If one is contemporising bohème, we need to know our location, and some reference to the reality of Covid feels necessary. There are missed opportunities to incorporate issues of the day, from gender fluidity to MeToo and the design is just not poverty-stricken enough – simultaneously giving rise to some very awkward staging motifs.

Sadly this significant over-simplification doesn’t raise the bar high enough. Even so, the inescapable power of Puccini’s music, married to the narrative resonance with our past two years of hardship, does leave a lump in your throat.

In rep until June 14, festival runs until July 10; nevillholtopera.co.uk

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