San Francisco Classical Voice

OPERA REVIEW

Fine Bohème Weak at the Top

November 22, 2002

Guiping Deng (Mimi)

Maureen Mattes (Musetta)

Malcolm MacKenzie (Marcello)

By Barbara Baker

The opera La Bohème is about four young men who are following their bliss by coming to Paris to pursue the art of their choice, and in their spare time invent modern life. So far so good in the Sacramento Opera's production that opened Friday. Set in Paris in the era of the early successes of Hector Berlioz, they live lives not unlike those of the characters on the sitcom “Friends,” falling in love, quarrelling and breaking up. They feel very real to us today. We like to feel that one of them went on to become a great cultural icon, like Picasso or Hemingway. We are ready to love with them and suffer with them.

The Sacramento Opera production was only partially successful in getting us to love the characters. The second act at the café Momus was brilliantly exciting with the most outrageous Musetta I have ever seen. She even included a short lap dance with Marcello. Musetta and her Marcello, played by Maureen Mette and Malcolm Mackenzie, were youthful and magnetic. The chorus, sets and staging for this scene all added to the general merriment. There was a bit where two waiters tied Marcello to a chair that I didn't quite understand. Perhaps he has destroyed the restaurant on previous occasions and these are preventive measures.

The Mimi of Guiping Deng was also very likeable. It is easy to imagine that she would be a wonderful Cio-Cio-San, a role she sang here last year. She has a beautiful soprano voice and shows sensitivity to Puccini's phrasing, now stopping, now rushing forward, now pulling back phrasing of Giacomo Puccini. We want them to look beautiful, act and sing well, but above everything else we want to know do they feel this? Can they find the passion in the phrasing of Puccini? She finds it. I would fault her only for a diva-like adjusting of her pillows just before dying.

Main man misses

But La Bohème is Rodolfo's opera. It's his romance we're here to see, fall in love with and ultimately to mourn. It is, however, hard to find anything good to say about José Medina. It says in the program that he “is known throughout the world as a bel canto specialist.” Whatever he has done elsewhere in that genre, as a Puccini tenor he leaves everything to be desired.

He is a lyric tenor and so is Rodolfo, but clearly Puccini is expecting a heavier voice. When Mimi sings, Puccini thins out the orchestration to allow the lyric soprano to be heard, but when Rodolfo begins, it becomes heavy again. He is expecting the tenor to soar above the sound of this denser orchestra. Much of the time Medina could not be heard at all.

No one sounds naturally like an operatic tenor. Many hours are spent in practice adjusting the resonators to get just the right effect. While clearly Medina has spent the hours tuning the sound of his voice, he has neglected to let us in on the result. His voice, especially in the high register, disappears into his head. To himself perhaps he sounds fabulous. This tight technique may be just the right thing for the coloratura singing required for bel canto, but it doesn't work here. His acting as well is probably better suited to the less naturalistic settings of bel canto.

Much to recommend

The Sacramento Opera is aspiring to professional operatic standards and needs to be praised as much as possible. Colline, sung by Stephen Janzen, sings feelingly to his coat. The conducting of Timm Rolek was excellent. Billed as the Artistic Director of the Sacramento Opera, he is in his eighth year as the regular conductor of the Grand Forks Symphony in North Dakota. I recognized the name of Stanley Lunetta on timpani from my days in Sacramento and assume that the rest of the orchestra is also local. The sets, provided by the Seattle Opera, were good in the middle acts, though I found the garret excessively huge and drab. Thomas Holliday directed.

I didn't cry, and I cry at everything.