FOUR STARS

 

The mighty task behind it of Wagner’s Ring cycle, thrice given, Longborough Festival Opera turned to one of the briefer works in the repertoire to bring down the curtain on its triumphant 2013 season.
Famously the favourite opera of King George V — “it’s the shortest” — La bohème fits comfortably, with ten minutes to spare, into the time span of just the first act of Götterdämmerung. But it certainly compensates in dramatic meat and melody for what it lacks in length.
Both qualities were fully in evidence in the hugely satisfying LFO production, directed and designed by Richard Studer and conducted by Jonathan Lyness.
As so often where this opera is concerned, one felt that the vocal demands made on heroine Mimi (splendidly sung by Katie Bird) are somewhat beyond what might be expected of a frail consumptive; but this is an aspect of verismo that one is always willing to sacrifice in the cause of greater enjoyment.
Her deathbed scene was among the most affecting I have encountered with this opera, as might have been noted by the tears
running down my cheeks.
The pairing with tenor Robyn Lyn Evans, proved a perfect matching. So, indeed, did that of the opera’s other ‘on-off’ couple — the Musetta of Fiona Murphy and artist Marcello, portrayed by young Australian baritone Grant Doyle, who I had seen on equally fine form a few days earlier as Opera Holland Park’s Zurga, in Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles.