“It sends, it’s crazy! says Éric Ruf, the general administrator of the Comédie-Française, enthusiastic about the beauty of Puccini’s music and the talent of the singers, after a rehearsal of La Bohème at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Coming out of the show a few days later, we can only prove him right.
Crazy indeed, the musical splendor of this production: the National Orchestra of France which shimmers under the direction of Lorenzo Passerini, the sometimes fiery, sometimes delicate Mimi camped by the Italian soprano Selene Zanetti, and an exceptional Rodolfo, the Samoan tenor Pene Pati, who will be heard this summer at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in Lucia di Lamermoor and whose vocal power evokes the young Luciano Pavarotti.
If this Bohemia dazzles, it is also by its staging. “I like to match what people expect without giving it to them completely,” explains Éric Ruf. I don’t want to create an initial disappointment. With La Bohème, we want the sets, the costumes, the snow… Let it be beautiful. And how beautiful!
The action takes place in a theater where Rodolfo and his comrades in misery repaint the curtain. In the exterior scenes, the landscape surmounted by a Fellini moon looks like a deserted Cinecittà. At the Café Momus, the warm lights and the orange dress of Musetta (Amina Edris) evoke a painting by Toulouse-Lautrec.
Magnificent director of actors, Éric Ruf succeeds as well in the scenes of camaraderie full of humor between Rodolfo and his companions as the dazzle of the romantic encounter. And offers us this gift: the impression of discovering the most seen and revisited of Puccini’s operas with the emotion of the first time.
Le Point: Do you like melodrama, this theatrical genre to which La Bohème owes so much?
This moment, at the end of Act III, when the couple of Rodolfo and Mimi are about to say goodbye and then decide that they could love each other until spring… They make a bet on the future and c t is a very beautiful love duet, suddenly interrupted by the sound of saucepans, a trivial argument between the other couple. We abruptly change our tone. I also think of that moment, in Act IV, where the friends are joking around, fooling around when suddenly someone comes along to announce that Mimi is going to die. These are fundamentally theatrical axes.
What do you think of the booklet after this in-depth work?
The preconception that I often have about opera librettos is that it’s written on the corner of the table, that it doesn’t count that much with regard to the music. Nothing could be further from the truth! We realize while working on the scenes that the librettists [Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, editor’s note], in close connection with Puccini, have a real knowledge of the human soul. It’s very rich, nothing is cliché, whereas we think that melodrama is a series of clichés. When you go inside, there is literature. Enough to create a whole network of meaning.
And the music ?
Puccini is infinitely theatrical. We can’t help crying, our hearts are filled with enthusiasm. The power of the singers in this repertoire, the power of the orchestra, for me, a man of the theatre, it’s wonderful. In the theatre, we reach a ceiling quickly, we cannot draw these weapons. I’m like a kid in front of a cavalcade: tessitura, scales, beauty!
In the scene of their meeting, Rodolfo, after seeing this young woman and beginning to seduce her, stops to tell her: “I would like you to know who I am, I am a poet, I write. It’s a real romantic encounter, magnificent in height, in delicacy.
And then it’s up to her. She said, “I live up there, I don’t have anything, I do embroidery… that’s enough for me, I make flowers.” This work is also touching for that: Puccini puts all his music at the service of little destinies, this discreet woman, who will have barely known love, who dies of tuberculosis…
Why set the action in theater sets?
Puccini and the librettists stage a philosopher, a poet, a musician, a painter… That is to say, they tell the story of themselves. Bohemia is a relationship to life, to the imagination, a quality of invention… In the first act, we see this boy who is cold. So, because he has no wood, he burns his work that no one knows about. And the friends have the humor to comment on the literary quality of the text in the light of the flickering flame. We want to love them. I thought of Chaplin eating his shoe in The Gold Rush. There is courage, greatness.
I try not to interfere with the great musical moments, not to put my ink in the aquarium. It’s such fun these tunes, almost like circus art. We hang on the tightrope walker, we want it to get to the other end, and we don’t breathe all the while. I try that these airs are not heroic, that something of love, jealousy, annoyance pushes the characters each time to go upmarket.
At the opera, I don’t decide the time. You can’t change the rhythm of a scene, unlike in theatre. This constraint is fertile: time exists with a real density and when there are two seconds of silence, it takes on an extraordinary value.
“La Bohème” by Giacomo Puccini. Directed by Eric Ruf. With Selene Zanetti, Pene Pati, Alexandre Duhamel, Francesco Salvadori, Guilhem Worms, Amina Edris. Musical direction: Lorenzo Passerini. Orchester national de France, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées until June 24.