THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 2, 1995 TAG: 9503020047
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
THANKS TO PUCCINI, opera lovers will always have Paris. In ``La boheme,'' bohemians work and play and love to some of opera's sweetest melodies.
Generations of audiences have seen the artists' garret and the bustling Cafe Momus in countless productions. But when ``boheme'' returns to the Harrison Opera House on Friday, it will have a new look.
This will be the first ``boheme'' in operatic history to feature a jeep.
Stage director Johnathon Pape and designer Allen Charles Klein have transported the work from the 19th century to the years just after World War II, when Paris was recovering from Nazi occupation.
Virginia Opera fans have grown accustomed to such relocations this season. ``Simon Bolivar'' was set in a museum. The stark ``Salome'' had no particular time or place. Even the exquisite ``La traviata'' ended in a fantastic room filled with candles.
Between rehearsals last week, Pape (pronounced poppy) and Klein insisted that although they've updated ``boheme,'' they haven't meddled with its meaning.
Klein said they could use their set to play the opera the usual way ``by just changing a few posters, because Paris hasn't changed that much since the 1870s.''
Paris hasn't, but people have. Klein and Pape believe that moving the story up to the 1940s makes Rodolfo, Mimi and their friends more recognizable to modern audiences.
``Our intention isn't to shock,'' Klein said. ``It's not a scandalous production at all. It's not a perversion of it in any way, shape or form.''
The plot remains the same: The poet Rodolfo shares a studio with fellow artists. The tubercular Mimi knocks on the door because her candle has gone out. They fall in love. After quarreling and separating, they are reunited at her deathbed.
Tenor Donald Braswell, a Juilliard School graduate, and soprano Elizabeth Biggs are in the principal roles. A Milwaukee Sentinel critic wrote that Biggs, ``with her true, clear, clean voice and sensitive acting, epitomized the tragic figure of Mimi.''
The other pair of lovers, Marcello and Musetta, will be sung by Virginia Opera alumni Amy Johnson and Bojan Knezevic. Johnson was acclaimed for her work in ``Simon Bolivar,'' and Knezevic was a memorable Leporello in ``Don Giovanni.'' Assistant Artistic Director Jerome Shannon will conduct.
In this ``boheme,'' the singers wear modern clothes instead of period costumes, and American GIs stroll the Parisian streets.
``Lots of times, `boheme' is very prettified,'' said Pape, who is making his debut with the company.
``It becomes very Currier and Ives,'' Klein interjected. ``When something gets too pretty, you forget what it's all about. You forget `boheme' is about death, is about failure, is about hope . . . a group of people who are very downtrodden, don't have the money for heat and food. Starvation and death aren't pretty subjects.''
Yet this ``boheme'' is not contemporary - it isn't the famous Peter Sellars ``Don Giovanni'' production set in Harlem, now available on video. The half-century since the end of the war gives this production what Pape called ``romantic distance.''
Pape said, ``It is a period of great change, hope, deprivation. Horrible conditions juxtaposed with . . . ''
``The newfound hope, freedom,'' Klein continued. ``Under the Nazis, Paris was a dead city. The Champs-Elysees was hung with Nazi flags. The people of Paris were totally pushed down by the Nazis. As soon as the war was over, my God, Paris blossomed again.''
Klein, who designed the company's 1994 ``Norma'' and 1991 ``Madama Butterfly,'' divides his time between the United States and France. Some years ago, he and stage director Bliss Hebert acquired a home in Alsace that was once a Nazi headquarters and later an Allied field hospital. Klein became fascinated by the war and began collecting photographic books.
``I'm looking through these books and seeing photographs of young students and workers and old ladies,'' he recalled. ``Once they heard the Americans had landed, they started building barricades. They would take the grating from around trees and build barricades where they could fight the Germans and help the Americans. Sometimes just the photographs of the people in the books finally made me cry.
``I always said if I ever got to design a `boheme,' this is what I'd do.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Tamara Voninski, Staff
Elizabeth Biggs plays Mimi and Donald Braswell protrays Rodolfo...
by CNB