Hyeseoung Kwon’s gorgeous Mimi shines in a fun-sized version of Puccini’s classic.

Mimi is a poor seamstress. Her apartment is tiny and poorly-built; she is constantly frozen by the Parisian winter winds. She is desperately lonely. She has an ominous cough. She spends almost her entire life trying to afford it. To top it all off, she has just made the mistake of walking into an opera by Puccini.

But she is more than just a tragic victim. On Christmas Eve, 1913, she knocks on the door of her boisterous neighbours, a bunch of hard-partying bankrupt pseudo-hippie artists and playwrights. She was walking in the poorly-lit streets outside her apartment when her candle blows out. She knocks on the door to get it relit – and immediately falls in love. So begins La Bohème, arguably the most tragic and unforgettable of Puccini’s operas.

Once again, the women were the stars of the show, particularly Kwon’s Mimi. Opera Queensland’s female casting has been consistently brilliant this year. La Bohème is worth the price of entry just to watch Kwon alone. As an actor, she is sublime. She is quietly flirtatious, subtly sexy. And yet she is a believably shy and introverted Mimi. Her presence in a room is never too obvious. It’s quite a performance.

Her voice, too, is almost perfection, particularly in the famous duets of the second act. It’s a role she already made her own at Opera Australia, and it shows. Truly she is a rising international star. Next year she’s off to Albert Hall; for the next few weeks she performs across rural Queensland. It’s an incredible opportunity for rural opera-lovers, many of whom had the opportunity to actually perform with her, in the chorus. It’s also nice to have a small person in the role: her “cold little hand” is actually convincingly little, for once.

Emily Burke makes a hilarious Musetta, the manic sweetheart of Shaun Brown’s do-eyed Marcello who repeatedly and cruelly provokes his jealousy by enjoying herself a little much with other men. On tour the opera functions on a rotating cast and Burke is the double for Mimi, a demanding schedule. The male actors were excellent as well, particularly Bradley Daly’s rambunctious Rodolfo.

The setting was subtly different to the original source as well. OperaQ recreated the doomed France of 1913 in the place of Bohemian 1840s Paris. The French Gendarmerie march across the stage in their infamous red pants (which famously c’est la france). In the next year those red pants made very poor camouflage. And the opera is full of grim allegory like that – with just that one slight change, and some absolutely phenomenal work from the costumes department, the show creates an entirely new level of tension. The story becomes a metaphor for the death of Edwardian Europe – told through one of its most notable cultural artefacts. I love the irony.

OperaQ’s La Bohème uses a special chamber arrangement for this touring production. Richard Gill has done a very creditable job as he always does  – single brass and woodwinds aside from a second oboe, and a bare octet of strings – and it understandably shrinks into the background for almost the entire show. Under the baton of Guy Noble, it had its moments, particularly a couple of really beautiful duets between solo violin (Alan Smith, I assume) and Kwon. Though the small orchestra is a bit of a shame, and although it puts even more vocal pressure on the cast, it was barely a problem in the tiny Queensland Conservatorium Theatre. One exception: the end of Bohème, of course, is a grand and magnificent series of chords. They were neither grand nor massive, I’m sorry to say. Such are the compromises that have to be made in a touring opera.

Once again a triumph from Opera Queensland, which has had a consistently brilliant year. Once again, also, the women stole the show. I very much hope rural Queenslanders take full advantage of the tour, as well – the bush may rarely get such a refined and sensitive offering again.

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