Honk if you’re happy opera’s back – La bohème’s drive-in debut

It was a hoot. Literally. Hoot, hoot, parp, parp, toot, toot – as the 100 or so Mr, Ms, and Mrs Toads (not to exclude transgender or hermaphroditic toads, of course), who had barnstormed their way along the Great North Way to Alexandra Palace to experience English National Opera’s (ENO) raspberry to Covid- a drive-in La bohème– lent on their horns and flashed their headlights in approval.

Don’t take your Chevy to the levy, take your Wolseley to Wood Green! (Give me a break, there aren’t many makes that alliterate with W. Ok, ok, Wartburg. Not British.)

This production did not set out to match a full stage bohème. Cut down to 90 minutes, many of the explanatory development passages which add context to the story were missing. Compression meant that the Rodolfo/Mimi story came across more as a wham, bang, thank-you-mam one-nighter than a tragic love affair.

The libretto was completely recast in English by Amanda Holden – no, don’t be obtuse, not the ditzy celeb – probably one of the most skilled librettists on the opera scene today. It read clunkily, but, when voiced, was beautifully articulate. As this production was aimed at a wider than usual audience, the clarity of the lines made the whole instantly comprehensible. With no surtitles visible – although there was diminutive script scrolling top stage- this was vital for a car-bound audience, especially those parked towards the rear.

Ms Holden is a class act at making opera comprehensible. Her librettos for Brett Turner’s “Bliss” and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “The Silver Tassie” were widely acclaimed. Ms Holden has worked with ENO on productions of “Don Giovanni”, “Lucia de Lammermoor”, “Rodelinda” and “Partenope”. ENO has been experimenting with abandoning surtitles/supertitles. I’m an abolitionist – if libretti are well modulated to the ear. I guess 40% of an artist’s presentation is lost when eyes are flickering from stage to script.

The setting of this bohème, down at heel and luck bohemians occupying a fleet of camper vans, randomly parked who knows where, and the elegant Café Momus represented as an over the top, tatty fairground, was not successful. This was a long way from the garrets of left-bank intellectual, romantic, roof top Paris. The mostly static, parked camper vans allowed no sense of the passage of time. “The Only Way is Essex” sprang to mind. Think Clacton Caravan Park.

La bohème is a gut-wrenching tragedy. Choosing it just because it is one of the most popular Puccini works in the repertory, and then playing it as a comedy, was artistically pointless. What next for the ENO? Perhaps, Hamlet, with the Ghost King Hamlet havin’ a larf. “Woo, woo, Hamlet, I’m your murdered dad. Give that adulterous mother of yours a slap from me. And do-in your stepfather while you’re at it.” “Right on, Pop. What do you think, Yorrick?” “Gottle of geer.”

There are plenty of comic operas out there. Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore, for example. Oh, ENO, you should have used one of those. But as the Drive and Live was a defiant fist in the face of Covid distancing that I admire, maybe I’m being too picky.

To be clear, I wasn’t one of the honkers. I watched the Sky Arts presentation. I probably got a better view than the cooped-up toads. And a few extras, like the opening shot of an arriving 1970s white Jaguar XJ two door Coupé, sweeping into Ally Pally.

Back in the day I owned two of those beautiful 70’s British Leyland rot-boxes, and I had this sneaking foreboding it would run out of petrol before it made its parking slot. Not for nothing were those BL Jags rated the RAC Rescue man’s best friend.

Once parked in line, vehicle occupants faced a stage with the dimly lit orchestra elevated at the rear on two scaffolded storeys. Martyn Brabbins, ENO’s Music Director, conducted atop a scissor-lift. Waving his baton, he could have been mistaken for a window cleaner buffing up the outside of a multi storey. He and the orchestra overcame all the challenges of split level, back of stage, sound amplified technology and delivered Puccini’s score in a roisterous musical style.

Planning on a spectacular mountain top rendering of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony? Or, perhaps an Iron Conductor Challenge? Call Mr. Brabbins and the boys and girls of the ENO. They are game birds. At the end, he turned, unfazed, while still 10 feet off the ground, and acknowledged the hooting and flashing headlights with his customary self-effacing nod and a grin.

Not so successful were the gratuitous, funky musical interjections in the Café Momus scene, when a dancing troupe appeared onstage – bearing hither and thither absurd, inflated flowers. Was this meant to be “cool” and “woke”? The amplified, heavy beats of recorded sound broke the mood of the performance. The choreography became a stand-alone act, facing front, none of the action integrated with the principal characters or plot.

The bohème street scene is an important element of the onstage action. This was a clunky mistake. The audience using their car FM systems to listen along must have thought the airwaves had been momentarily hijacked by the local Ally Pally Pirate Station.

The voices were outstanding. Natalya Romaniw, a Welsh soprano, has a rich and fluent tone which swept the role of Mimi along. But, who chose that ghastly frock? Mimi is a Parisian seamstress, for goodness sake. She wouldn’t be seen dead in that dowdy, flowery number picked off a barrow in the Balls Pond Road.

Rodolfo was sung by British tenor David Butt Philip, now with many varied roles – Grail Knight in Parsifal; Florestan, Fidelio; The Prince, Rusalka – under his belt. His is a dark, tenor voice, arguably a miscasting for the soaring, skipping ranges demanded of Puccini’s Rodolfo. But, his depth added a dimension to the character and the pairing with Ms Romaniw was inspired.

Soprano, Soraya Mafi, as Musetto and  Baritone Roderick Williams as Rodolfo started this bohème race handicapped by ridiculous outfits. Musetto entered the action in a clapped-out Mercedes CL drophead – does no-one in the ENO own a decent car? – wearing an outrageous puffed-out doll costume and enormous wig, described as a “drollerie” by one critic. I judged it simply ridiculous, and, alongside Rodolfo’s pink suit, a self-indulgent in-joke too far. The point about Bohème is that it is a commentary on serious artists getting by in hard times, not an exercise in pantomime buffoonery.

Director, P J Harris, who has progressed through Scottish Opera, the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne, Opéra de Lyons, Polish National Opera and Garsington, had, it’s true, a difficult task compressing the action to fit the occasion. Dumbing down, too, was a mistake.

Can I say this kindly? No, I can’t. Mr Harris screwed up. It seemed he had a performance in mind that would suit the esoteric staging of the event. Sod Puccini, here’s what I think. The attempt to squeeze the chosen bohème geni into his preconceived, ill-fitting bottle just did not work.

There was some pitch-perfect comedy slipped into the action, to complement the parking riff. The introduction from a microphone-blowing, clipboard bearing, luminescent, straggly-haired, “only doing my job, mate” health and safety officer, lecturing the audience on parping and flashing etiquette was hilarious.

It turned out that this officious jobsworth was also Benoit, the bohemians’ hapless landlord, played by tenor Trevor Eliot Bowes, a doppelganger, straight from the Blackadder Goes Forth trenches, of Hugh Lawrie’s gormless George. Brilliant double casting.

At the end of the day, I would be a curmudgeonly, Covid lockdown grump if I did not concede that, despite all its frustrating flaws, the ENO’s Drive and Live was a heroic effort to take us to what may well pass for the new normal.

While other opera companies stage multi-screened Zoom events, or extravagantly produced concerts to compensate for dark stages, ENO is to be congratulated for going live, being innovative, and devising an operatic format for distancing times.

And bully to Uber for sponsoring, when the only way you can’t attend these events is in a taxi. That is, unless, of course, your driver likes opera. I hope the finances worked well enough to take Drive-and-Live La bohème round the country. Coming to a car park near you…