Roll Call

Meanwhile, back on Bunker Hill: An audience’s collective tear ducts in the fourth act are the sure-fire litmus for any La Boheme performance; on opening night, from a well-located seat in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, I detect nary a sniffle. The Herbert Ross production, first seen in 1993, is especially admirable for the way it leaves room for a properly chosen cast to behave as recognizable human participants in a human drama. No such luck this time, however. The idea may have been a good one, to cast the opera with young unknowns, but we get a shrill, squally Rodolfo in Aquiles Machado, tenor-shaped in the blobby, old-fashioned way so that Herb Ross‘ plan for his fourth-act entrance, riding a bicycle, is out of the question. (He merely pushes it on.)

Leontina Vaduva’s Mimi lacks spirit, tone or even proper respect for pitch -- fashioned, in other words, from the same tattered fabric as her Marguerite in last season‘s Faust. Earle Patriarco’s Marcello, a company debut, also seems cut from common cloth; Eric Owens‘ Colline and Malcolm MacKenzie’s Schaunard are, so to speak, just there. That leaves Inva Mula‘s Musetta to steal hearts and, indeed, the whole show -- as she had in the 1997 revival -- during her few moments onstage, and to make at least those moments worth the $148 that the company believes such second-rate entertainment should be garnering at the box office. On the podium is William Vendice, the company’s chorus master and head of musical staff -- but hardly the torchbearer to make these proceedings burst into flame. Placido Domingo, an old and trustworthy Boheme hand, will conduct this weekend‘s performance (December 16 matinee). That has to be an improvement.