With Moulin Rouge doing well at the box office at the moment, I decided to see whether the IMDB contained an entry for the video of Luhrmann's original opera production La Boheme, the one that contains the huge rooftop sign saying L'Amour, which also features in Moulin Rouge. Well, it's here but no user comments at all. What a shame!
This Australian production is a wonderful La Boheme, more like a musical than an opera and not really for opera buffs. At the time of its first production it really was a production of the young, all the main singers as well as designer Catherine Martin and Baz himself being under thirty. The singers are good but not the very best, but most non-opera lovers will trade that in for singers who look the part. David Hobson is great looking as is Cheryl Barker who really does look consumptive at the end. And they can act. In the curtain calls at the end Hobson is really crying. This is emphatically not one of those opera productions where you desperately try to forget that the singers are middle-aged, decidedly rotund and definitely not suffering.
The design is beguiling, setting the opera in 1950s Paris complete with cool leather jackets, new look dresses and bright lights amid post-war drabness. It is stagey, because this is a video of a stage production but the original direction was very fluid and the set works beautifully. As with all updating there are problems with anachronisms (no wall around Paris is a problem). But these are small points. This was Baz Luhrmann's first hurrah and a great one too. Don't know how readily available it is but rush to see it if you can.
This Australian production is a wonderful La Boheme, more like a musical than an opera and not really for opera buffs. At the time of its first production it really was a production of the young, all the main singers as well as designer Catherine Martin and Baz himself being under thirty. The singers are good but not the very best, but most non-opera lovers will trade that in for singers who look the part. David Hobson is great looking as is Cheryl Barker who really does look consumptive at the end. And they can act. In the curtain calls at the end Hobson is really crying. This is emphatically not one of those opera productions where you desperately try to forget that the singers are middle-aged, decidedly rotund and definitely not suffering.
The design is beguiling, setting the opera in 1950s Paris complete with cool leather jackets, new look dresses and bright lights amid post-war drabness. It is stagey, because this is a video of a stage production but the original direction was very fluid and the set works beautifully. As with all updating there are problems with anachronisms (no wall around Paris is a problem). But these are small points. This was Baz Luhrmann's first hurrah and a great one too. Don't know how readily available it is but rush to see it if you can.