LA BOHEME
Covent Garden

WITH its attractively consumptive heroine, La Boheme is one of the few operas that can be improved by some atmospheric coughs from the audience.
Even pop star Shania Twain, sat in the stalls on opening night, had such a little coughing fit of empathy with Angela Gheorghiu‘s frail heroine Mimi that she almost had to leave during Act I.
For her part, Gheorghiu, the night’s main draw, is commendably restrained in the melodramatic role, and besides a little over-egging in the Mi chiamano Mimi aria, her voice is a knockout instrument.
Unfortunately, John Copley’s straightforward 1974 take on Puccini’s opera, here revived by Richard Gregson, does nothing to address the work’s usual problems.
So the romance between the poet Rodolfo and Mimi seems to rush by on fast-forward without ever quite finding a foothold on our emotions – if we swoon at all, it’s only at Puccini’s typically lush score.
La Boheme may be the easiest opera in the world to follow, but it nonetheless deserves better than the duff subtitles provided by David Edwards. For instance, the Rodolfo’s tender aria as he woos Mimi is usually translated as: “Your tiny hand is frozen,” but here it becomes the much less amorous: “Your hand is so small and cold,” as if comparing her to a frog.
But musically, it’s largely a success. Making his Covent Garden debut, the young tenor Mariusz Kwiecien does sterling work as the painter Marcello – he will no doubt be playing the lead very soon.
And although interval chatter reveals that most thought Tito Beltran much too short to play opposite the model-tall Gheorghiu, his voice was in rich form, and their Act I duets were easily worth all the production’s other shortcomings.
The test of a good La Boheme is ultimately visceral, and on that front this production does pretty well.
I can report that I got goosebumps four times, but I didn’t cry at the end.
And neither did Shania.

• La Boheme will be broadcast live on a giant screen in Covent Garden Piazza on June 30 at 7.30pm.