Opera Philadelphia brings a new perspective to ‘La bohème’

Puccini’s La bohème is opera’s great on-ramp. It sets the human and relatable story of a group of poor, struggling artists to vocal and orchestral writing so vivid and emotionally direct it anticipates film music.

Director Yuval Sharon has devised an unusual concept for Opera Philadelphia’s production, reversing the order of the acts. The story is stitched together with the narration of a new character, the Wanderer, and the opera is slightly cut and performed without intermission.

“It’s a perfect date night. If you’re seeing it for the first time, you’re so lucky,” said Sharon of La bohème, one of the genre’s most performed titles.

But he also hopes the unexpectedness of the reverse order of the acts might surprise veteran listeners.

“This really offers a brand new perspective. If you are someone that has seen it a hundred times, if you come with an open mind to it, I think you’ll discover so many things that you might have completely overlooked.”

When Mimì and Rodolfo meet in the first act, they share their stories in two arias. He is a poor poet, but with the soul of a millionaire. She is a seamstress, a loner but happy. Her candle has gone out, and a search for a lost key prolongs her visit to his apartment. The human need for intimacy in these two famous arias propels the story of La bohème, but the vocal writing that emerges here does double duty: It hits newbies with its astonishing power, and draws in operaphiles who hear it as a test of vocal talent.

Mimì has an extremely difficult one at the end of Act 1 — a soft high C as she is heard walking away in the arms of Rodolfo. His part is scored for the E below, which isn’t too tough. But some tenors go for the high C here, a feat that makes for a beautiful high-wire moment — if the singers are secure. Which version will the tenor take in this production?

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It is Christmas Eve in Paris’ Latin Quarter and Puccini sets spinning so many little dramas this scene goes by like a series of flash-vignettes. Mimì, Rodolfo, and their artist friends are carrying on, and Puccini scores the joyous humanity with an offstage band, an overexcited children’s chorus, a group of scolding mothers, and amused townsfolk.

Musetta has layers that emerge later in the opera, but in this famously flirty aria Puccini captures a superficial Musetta in a seductive but slightly ridiculous slow waltz. The coquettish aria ends after Musetta screams; her shoe is pinching her foot, and she sends her rich elderly suitor to buy her new shoes while wooing back her former lover.

In the frigid morning, Puccini scores the music with an unusual instrument: wine or drinking glasses, clinking in time to a chorus of women from a nearby tavern. Mimì sings of her difficult life with Rodolfo, who has become unduly jealous. “Sometimes at night I pretend to sleep, and I feel him trying to spy on my dreams.”

Rodolfo has left Mimì, and claims that she has been a flirt with other men. But soon he confesses the truth: that he loves her and it is her illness that pushed him away. In a stretch of emotionally ambiguous music the two agree to stay together, but only until spring.

Mimì and Rodolfo have now split up. But she comes back to him, and when she does she is gravely ill. The four artists sell their belongings to buy Mimì medicine. Musetta sells her earrings, and Colline, the philosopher, his overcoat, which he bids farewell in a famously short, sad aria, “Vecchia zimarra.”

Not quite, but many do. In this death scene, the orchestra rages and sobs when Rodolfo realizes that Mimì has died, and it is devastation in sound. But the moment of her death is actually announced to the listener a few bars earlier by a single, lonely double bass note held long as four sweet, muted violin voices signal that Mimì's spirit is gone.

Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni headline the 1972 recording with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. It is a classic and for good reason. But for expressive depth, seek out the (remastered) 1936 recording by Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra with Licia Albanese as Mimì, Jan Peerce as Rodolfo, and Anne McKnight as Musetta. Toscanini has insights that sound like a direct pipeline to the composer, and with good reason. He led the world premiere of the opera in Turin in 1896.

In 1907, Puccini and his wife traveled from Italy for the first Philadelphia performance of Madama Butterfly. John Luther Long — the Philadelphia lawyer who wrote the opera’s story — was also there for the performance, which featured opera stars Geraldine Farrar, Louise Homer, and Enrico Caruso.

La bohème is performed April 28 at 8 p.m., April 30 at 2 p.m., May 5 at 8 p.m., and May 7 at 2 p.m. at the Academy of Music, Broad and Locust Streets. In Italian with English supertitles, no intermission. Corrado Rovaris conducts the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra with a cast that includes Joshua Blue as Rodolfo, Kara Goodrich as Mimì, Troy Cook as Marcello, and Melissa Joseph as Musetta. Tickets are $25 to $299. operaphila.org, 215-732-8400.