Cara Consilvio, directing her second La Bohème this week since 2017 at Portland Opera, said she is thrilled if an operagoer leaves everyday life behind to travel to the world onstage. In La Bohème’s case, she loves it when audiences can immerse themselves for a couple of hours in Giacomo Puccini’s music, in the entire production.

So often that doesn’t happen when distractions and disappointments emerge that include such crucial elements as miscast singers, poorly executed music, corny plots, goofy or hard-to-follow libretti, lighting that undoes the mood, or an orchestra that is out of sync with the singers. Many moving parts are involved in making opera, and producing a very good one is a full-on trial.

In this Bohème, there were no distractions or misfits. All parts fit together. Like many opera fans, I’ve seen this one several times, always preparing myself for lapses of attention, but they didn’t set in. When put together as well as it was Nov. 15, a traditional, often-staged opera like La Bohème proves its lasting power. It just doesn’t get old.

The 2-hour-and-45-minute performance, not including two intermissions and one “pause” (a short intermission), is PO’s seasonal blockbuster. Sung in Italian with English supertitles, it opened for three performances Nov. 15 (other shows are Nov. 21 and Nov. 23) at the 2,992-seat Keller Auditorium, a hard place to fill. Though the “room” wasn’t sold-out, a substantial audience showed fervent enthusiasm. Many were dressed to the nines in Parisian chic, if without the 1890’s mutton sleeves. 

Some of this all-age audience made valiant dress-up efforts to reflect the bohemian soul of the Latin Quarter during the 1890s, the opera’s setting. But it was the production itself that utterly captured its spirit.

Skillfully directed, choreographed, lit, acted and sung, Bohème featured intricate, highly graphic gray gritty sets reflecting the poverty of starving determined artists. Michael Yeargan, who won a Tony Award in 2005 for Light in the Piazza, designed it in the 1990s for a San Francisco Opera production, and PO revitalized the sets. Yeargan’s first project was in 1970, another La Bohème at the Nevada Opera Company, and since then his work has been seen all over the world.

Puccini’s elegantly melodic opera that premiered in1896 is the Italian music titan’s most enduring. But plenty of mediocre La Bohèmes surface, partly because opera singers learn to perform the roles early in their careers. This production, however, showcased some real stars, including dreamy-voiced tenor Alok Kumar, perfectly cast as the poet Rodolfo; energetic soprano Katrina Galka, the ballbuster Musetta who grows into a sympathetic character (she shares the role with Aubry Ballaro who will sing Nov. 23); and baritone Markel Reed as Marcello, the painter who falls in and out of love with Musetta. 

Sponsor

Rebecca Krynski Cox plays the poetic role of Mimi who is either sick or dying throughout the opera. A regal woman taller than her lover Rodolfo, Cox sang the part of Wendy Torrance in PO’s recent The Shining (see my Oregon ArtsWatch review), where her co-singers outshone her. In this opera, her full-throated soprano came through. She is not the typical frail Mimi dying of consumption/tuberculosis; she is a strong-minded towering woman, who is “the poetry if not the poet,” as Rodolfo boasts to his friends. It’s a welcome creative sign when stereotypes are successfully overturned, as this one was. Both sopranos reach the stratosphere in their parts. Cox sings a high “C” at the end of Act I, and Galka’s whirlwind Musetta reaches a high “B” in “Quando m’en vo,” also known as ”Musetta’s Waltz” at the cafe when trying to make her former lover, Marcello, jealous.

Though the opera focuses primarily on the two couples in and out of love – and their bohemian wine-drinking lives in garrets, dives and Cafe Momus – smaller roles emerge like bright surprises along the way. Especially good was veteran Portland baritone Richard Zeller, who plays Benoit, the landlord. He seeks months of back rent from the artists, who include writer Rodolfo, painter Marcello, philosopher Colline (rising star bass-baritone Jason Zacher) and irrepressible Schaunard (baritone Adrian Rosales), who pulls off fancy dance moves and hilarious singing. For a bunch of poor guys, these men know how to dress with style. Costume designers Fabian F. Aguilar and Martin Pakledinaz do shabby-chic quite well.

In one funny scene – Bohème is a tragedy but crackles with comedy, too – this clever penniless group living in a frigid Latin Quarter garret on Christmas Eve plies Benoit with wine. As Benoit is graciously given the bum’s rush, thoroughly inebriated (there’s enough wine in this opera to fill the Seine), he forgets about the money. Zeller also plays Alcindoro, a rich dalliance of Musetta’s, whom she ditches in the cafe for her former lover, Marcello. During this Act Two, where Musetta is flitting about and flirting, the chorus appears, and it’s a well-choreographed and well-rehearsed group with 39 adult singers, 10 kids and eight supernumeraries. As part of this opera’s verismo (realistic style fearlessly portraying the hard-up common folk), young voices emerge, too – yes, there are kids in the world. Such colorful street-vendor characters as the prune seller (John Boelling) and toy seller Parpignol (Nathaniel Catasca) make brief appearances.

Bohème‘s story is mostly about the confusing and addicting nature of love; the hardships of poverty and non-existent health insurance along with sorting through these difficulties with high spirits; and the camaraderie of the men and women passionately living out their lives in Paris’ Latin Quarter, not unlike in artist colonies throughout the world. Wait, do those exist anymore? 

These artists might be broke, but they’re going to live fully.

For me, the opera deep-down is about Puccini’s brilliant music. In Act Three, Musetta and Marcello fight while Mimi and Rodolfo make up – at least until spring. They all sing, and the back-and-forth harmonies make you want more. In the same act, when Marcello and Rodolfo discuss jealousy, boredom that comes with familiarity, and distress of failing health, their duet hits the heart. Markel Reed, who sings Marcello, by the way, originated the role of Chester in Fire Shut Up in My Bones with Opera Theatre of St. Louis when it premiered in 2019. Looking a little like a young Jesse Jackson in profile, Reed is a baritone to watch.

My only complaint was that the orchestra was overwhelming in the opening scene, drowning out the men’s voices. It calmed down within 30 minutes and seemed to recalibrate, though it swelled off and on and covered up a few moments of singing. PO’s Nicholas Fox conducted, and for the most part, he led music that captured the mellifluous Puccini style that opera-lovers are unable to resist. Fox had another hurdle to clear: The Keller is not the ideal place for operas because it is so huge and completely lacking in intimacy. Unlike Broadway singers, opera performers are not miked. Then again, many major opera houses are huge. However, if PO has to produce one opera in the barnlike Keller, La Bohème was a good choice.

Sponsor

The opening-night opera was an occasion to celebrate the retirement of General Director Sue Dixon, who led the company since 2019 and will retire at the end of the year. She managed to engage a younger first-time operagoing audience and to raise a lot of money. She produced several world premieres, parts of Our Oregon, commissioned works based on unsung women in Oregon history. They included 2022’s Beatrice about Beatrice Morrow Cannady; 2024’s Shizue: An American Story, based on Shizue Iwatsuki, a Japanese-American who lived in Hood RIver; and The Crownmaker, upcoming in 2026, about Eva Castellanoz, a Mexican-American folk artist and healer. Dixon studded the seasons with such contemporary and BIPOC-focused operas as The Shining, Central Park Five, Thumbprint, When the Sun Comes Out, Frida and Journeys to Justice, among others. Along with those achievements, she delivered greater diversity to the opera’s staff, casts and artistic teams.

A national search is on, and Dixon will be missed.