Opera through the years:
La Bohème

1957

We first presented Puccini’s bohemian romance in our second season, touring the production to Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and Newcastle. Staged by the prolific Australian director Robin Lovejoy, the tour was performed in English and starred Elsie Morison, an Australian soprano who was a regular at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. She made her Covent Garden debut in 1953 as Mimì, so this Australian tour was a triumphant homecoming.

Max Worthley played Rodolfo, with Joy Mammen as Musetta, Neil Easton as Marcello and a young Neil Warren-Smith as Colline.

1963

Six years later, we took La Bohème on the road again, in a production hired from the New Zealand Opera Company. The opera was again performed in English and one of the season’s hits, starring Valda Bagnall and Edward Byles as Mimì and Rodlfo, with several cast changes over the course of the tour. Legendary New Zealand designer Raymond Boyce created the sets and costumes, and John Thompson directed.

1983

The 1970 production directed by Renzo Frusca was eventually rebuilt, and remained in our repertoire for many years. Plenty of leading singers took on these great roles over the decades, and different directors offered their own interpretations (within the template laid down by Frusca).

In 1983, Luciano Pavarotti agreed to a series of concerts in Australia and three performances as Rodolfo, opposite his protegé Madelyn Renée , at the Sydney Opera House. Later in the season, Australian singers Marilyn Richardson and Lamberto Furlan took over the roles.

1999

Opera Australia’s long-serving Artistic Director Moffatt Oxenbould took on Puccini’s opera in his final year at the company. He teamed up with designers Russell Cohen and Peter England, who Oxenbould had previously worked with on his wildly popular production of Madama Butterfly. The production was set in 1896, the year of the opera’s premiere when some of the most beautiful pictures of Parisian bohemian life were being made, by artists like Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard and Vuillard. The set itself was inspired by a photograph of the dilapidated proscenium arch and stage of the Bouffes du Nord Theatre in Paris.

Conductor Carlo Felice Cillario led the orchestra and three casts of singers took on these great roles, including Jamie Allen, Jae-Woo Kim and Anson Austin as Rodolfo, Anke Höppner, Nicole Youl and Lisa Russell as Mimì, Tim DuFore, John Pringle and Douglas McNicol as Marcello, and Amelia Farrugia and Elisa Wilson as Musetta.

2005

Simon Phillips had directed several brilliant productions for us (mostly comedies) when he came to La Bohème in 2005 with a new contemporary lens. He set the production in a modern-day apartment block, designed by Stephen Curtis, showing a cross-section of the building to create a voyeuristic, Rear Window-esque experience. The production premiered in Sydney with Welsh tenor Rhys Meirion as Rodolfo, Miriam Gordon-Stewart as Mimì, Jared Holt as Marcello and Amelia Farrugia as Musetta.

2018

Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour might take place in Sydney’s temperate autumn each year, but snow fell over the water every night in 2018. That snow was part of director Andy Morton’s spectacular outdoor version of La Bohème.

Designer Dan Potra created the perfect Parisian loft and streetscape for this story to play out over, capturing the glamour of Paris alongside the bohemian lifestyle of the opera’s central characters. Iulia Maria Dan and Maija Kovalevska shared the role of Mimì, while Ho-Yoon Chung and Paul O'Neill played Rodolfo. Samuel Dundas and Christopher Tonkin were Marcello, with Julie Lea Goodwin as Musetta at every performance. Brian Castles-Onion conducted the Opera Australia Orchestra from a studio hidden beneath the stage.