Episode 4: La Boheme in Outer Space & Backwards

Welcome back to “All The World’s a Stage. 

And this week we’re in Paris, France. 

The fact that you can’t hear someone singing in a space suit or can’t light a candle on the moon would seem to be two big impediments to setting the opera “La Boheme” in outer space—to say nothing of the fact that Puccini and his librettists wrote it to take place in Paris circa 1830. 

But none of this discouraged director Claus Guth, who with the lavish resources of the Paris Opera, placed Puccini’s beloved Bohemians not in the Latin Quarter in Act 1, but rather on a spaceship orbiting Earth. 

(Sound Up on excerpt Act 1 of La Boheme “Che gelida manina”) 

The opera opens with the painter Marcello singing the lines: 

(Sound Up on opening lines of La Boheme: “Questo mar rosso - mi ammollisce e assidera”) 

 “The Red Sea makes me feel cold and numb as if it were pouring over me.”  

Normally, the baritone sings this as he’s looking over a painting of ancient Egypt, but here at the Opera Bastille, he sang it looking out a spaceship’s window down at the Nile hundreds of thousands of feet below. 

It's a striking tableau and makes you hear the words in a very different manner; and so, in the very first moments, one has to say to Guth: “Mission Accomplished.”  

He’s a daring director, I liked his gothic “Salome” at the Metropolitan Opera last season, so this bold opening gave hope that this “Boheme” would also dazzle. 

And it does to a degree, but really, it “razzle dazzles”—so much so that when a silver show-biz curtain appears in some scenes, you think that it also wants to become a touring production of the musical, “Chicago.” 

(Sound Up on excerpt from Act 4 of La Boheme: “O Mimì, tu più non torni, 
O giorni belli”) 

This vaudeville style contrasts with the futuristic space setting and it illustrates the production’s core conceit: that “La Boheme” is a fantasy, a romantic—and not exactly lucid—remembrance of idealistic and youthful yesterdays.  

It’s worth noting the book “La Boheme” was based on, “Scènes de la vie de bohème,” was itself written in 1851, two decades after it was set. Guth seems to be putting nostalgia under a microscope here.  Showing us that we as human beings when lonely and under duress (hence the metaphor of the astronauts) calm our fears with rosy, bittersweet memories of a past that's more imagined than real. 

I enjoyed the Act 2 carnival parading through the space station with the young Rodolpho making Christmas merriment, while the cosmonaut Rodolpho lays in the de rigur Sleep Chamber nearby.  

(Sound Up on excerpt from Act 3 of La Boheme: “D'onde lieta usci al tuo grido 
d'amore torna sola Mimì”) 

And having Act 3 take place on the moon with snow falling is just sort of a gonzo move that allows for the striking image on the poster of Mimi dipped by the man in the space suit. 

Ultimately, Guth’s vision is more Kubrickian and cheeky than it is revelatory. More daring and illuminating—to this theatergoer—was Yuval Sharon’s vision of “La Boheme” at the Detroit Opera told in reverse: starting with Act 4 and ending with Act 1. Surprisingly, this novel way to shake up a standard, proved more shocking—and yet by the end re-assuring—that a masterpiece like “La Boheme” can withstand all sorts of directorial pressure and provocations. 

But Guth’s futuristic “Boheme” is captivating and it proves that in our high-tech present—and probably future— just as in Restoration Paris, time remains even more mysterious and elusive than space. 

Claus Guth’s “La Boheme”-in-outer space can be viewed on Paris Opera Vision; Henry Murger’s “Scenes of Bohemian Life” is available in paperback at P&T Knitwear for $24.95. 

Tune again next week for more All The World’s a Stage.