Broadway Cast News Articles
Down-Home Diva
By Celia R. Baker, The Salt Lake Tribune
16 March 2003
NEW YORK -- Until last year, Lisa Hopkins lived the monastic life of a
dedicated music student. Now, as one of the Mimis in Baz Luhrmann's hot Broadway version
of Puccini's opera "La Boheme," she is reveling in the star treatment: photo
shoots for fashion mags, designer gowns, red-carpet entrances and media frenzy.
So what are the pet demands of the brand-new diva?
No shows on Sunday, please, says this Mormon
girl and former Utahn -- and how about some sleeves on those Prada gowns?
Hopkins, 25, was born in Simi Valley, Calif., but lived in Salt Lake City from age 9 to
18, attending Muir Elementary, then the Waterford School; her parents still live in Salt
Lake City. Always a high achiever, Hopkins completed an LDS mission to Austria and an
acting degree at Yale before winning her spot in the boundary-busting "La
Boheme."
The three Mimis and three Rodolfos of "La
Boheme" -- triple-cast for longevity -- won out over more than 3,000 young opera
singers from around the globe in a search for attractive young singers with believable
acting skills.
Being cast as Mimi jolted Hopkins' life into warp speed, but she continues to pay dues
toward the major opera career she craves. She juggles twice-weekly appearances in "La
Boheme" with a full-time schedule at Manhattan School of Music, where she is a
master's candidate studying classical voice, and a private student of Marlena Malas. When
"La Boheme" runs its course -- and that won't be any time soon -- she wants to
be ready for new successes.
All About Baz: Sitting in a deli across the street from the "La Boheme" marquee
last week, Hopkins delivered a play-by-play of what she would be doing that moment if she
were onstage instead of watching striking musicians picket her theater. Snatches of
familiar arias, sung in a crystal-clear voice, punctuate her monologue, and Luhrmann's
name pops up frequently. Hopkins speaks of "Baz's" vision of opera as popular
entertainment; his emphasis on bringing audiences into the theatrical process; his
devotion to artistic truth and insistence on good storytelling.
"My contact with Baz Luhrmann has changed my perspective of what I want my career to be," says Hopkins. "He thinks about making opera sort of mainstream like any of the other pop singers."
"La Boheme" is one of the most talked-about events on Broadway, celebrated by most critics for bringing opera to the masses with a sexy young cast, spectacular visual appeal and a cheeky update from the 1830s to 1957. The bohemian Left Bank of Paris remains the setting. Detractors focus on the use of microphones -- an opera no-no -- and Luhrmann's populist tone, but there are few complaints about the quality of the singing.
On the cast recording, roles are shared between the triple set of leads, with Hopkins singing Act IV, Mimi's death scene. Besides the beauty and clarity of her soprano voice, Hopkins' acting skills are apparent in her tender farewells to Rodolfo, played by handsome Jesus Garcia.
Despite the hype surrounding the show, Hopkins
was surprised to find that being onstage is the most peaceful part of her week.
"I have no nerves about being onstage. I get to dress up and be someone else. It's
really the easiest part of my life, which I wouldn't have thought," says Hopkins.
"It never gets boring, and I never get sick of Puccini, or the opera, or what I'm
doing. Every show is slightly different, every moment."
Even Cinderella might envy Hopkins' dramatic
rise from obscurity to fame, but the sudden celebrity comes with unexpected challenges.
Hopkins adored shooting the television commercial for "La Boheme" and loved the
idea of photo shoots for Vanity Fair, Vogue and Elle. "It's amazing seeing yourself
in famous fashion magazines that you would never have thought your picture would show up
in," she says. Yet, the photo shoots became a trying experience as Hopkins explained
her standards of modest dress to magazine designers and photographers.
"I talked to my press people about my standards and they were to let people know, but I still have come face to face with people telling me that I have to wear different clothes. I was unprepared at first."
After having to attend a public function in a spaghetti-strap dress because nothing else was made available (she requested, and got, a shawl), Hopkins is firm with designers: "So. You're going to give me a sleeved dress, aren't you?"
A Disciplined Life: With her wild mane of curly red hair, creamy skin and pretty figure, Hopkins looks good in clothes, sleeves or not. An Associated Press review of "La Boheme" speaks of "a stylish Lisa Hopkins (who projects 1950s chic even in a barren garret)." But the demands of beauty maintenance, added to the omnipresent routine of taking care of her voice, require a disciplined life. She does her late-night partying onstage at "Boheme's" Cafe Momus, living quietly offstage.
Hopkins' regimen includes fitness workouts at the New York Sports Club followed by sessions in the steam room "for my voice." She eats nothing but liquids and bananas before shows, and works hard at getting plenty of sleep: "Sleep is what restores strength to the vocal cords." She is flattered by the whirl of media attention, but tires of the hoopla.
"There is a lot that goes into learning what you want your image to be, and making sure you look your best all the time because people are paying attention, and needing to go out and find a wardrobe," Hopkins says. "The high maintenance beauty and health care that is involved is something you would never really expect. . . . Glamour is a huge part of any publicity these days."
Though Hopkins is accustomed to keeping up with graduate school and pleasing her vocal teacher, she didn't realize how many demands would be put on her schedule as a result of "La Boheme."
"Sometimes I feel like I need a secretary for all the phone calls and interviews. There are PR and charity events, dinners for organizations donating money, signing playbills -- it all takes time that I didn't account for."
No wonder so many young performers melt down under the spotlight of early fame. But Hopkins, whose onstage innocence goes bone-deep, says it won't happen to her. She leans on her LDS faith for support and a sense of normalcy in her hectic life.
"Sundays are my sacred days. I told ['La Boheme' producers] I would never work on Sunday, and they have humored me. I do no form of work on Sundays, and I read my scriptures every day. That has remained very consistent," she says.
Hopkins attends church faithfully at the Manhattan LDS singles ward, which meets across the street from Lincoln Center and the Juilliard School. Some of her friends there have minor roles on Broadway; many are students at New York's prestigious schools. Hopkins doesn't spend much time off stage with members of the "La Boheme" cast because her school schedule doesn't leave room for socializing during the week.
"I really hang out with people on Sundays after church. My best group of friends is a fun, eclectic group . . . intellectually and artistically innovative people within the church and old roommates from Yale."
Among her friends are other young musicians with big plans. They help her sort out her thoughts about continuing a career that started with instant fame.
One of those is a friend from her LDS mission who is studying composition at Eastman School of Music in Philadelphia, Pa. The two are collaborating on a one-woman opera together -- he as composer, she as librettist. Hopkins has always written poetry, and is pleased to be creating the libretto for the fledgling opera, which she hopes to sing for her upcoming senior recital. Demure in other ways, Hopkins is not shy about her intentions to pursue an opera career in ways that are new and untried:
"I like to create what doesn't exist," says the determined young singer. "I don't find it so fulfilling to see where I fit into the opera world -- I want to make my own niche that includes writing, producing and directing. I hope to find people who think the same way, who want to change the trajectory of opera from an art form that glorifies the artist as opposed to the art form. That's where opera get's stuck, and becomes a self-indulgent, sort of a gaudy art form that turns the public off."
Big dreams. But career is not all Hopkins thinks about.
"I don't have a boyfriend right now, but I very much would like to get married and have kids," she says. "That will end up being far greater than anything else I do. But right now, I have the feeling that I have a lot to do in this world of artistry. Family will come naturally along the way. That is something I can't really plan."
The biggest challenge, at present, is figuring out what comes next:
"Once you are involved in something so high-profile, people expect a lot from you. I feel a lot of pressure to succeed in a really big way -- like it has to get bigger from here. You wonder where it's going to come from. But it's not really depressing, because it's all very exciting. It just has to do with being impatient."
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Opera goes neon
By Gregory M. Lamb, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
6 December 2002
(The image featured with this article can be found on the Miscellaneous Images page.)
'Our mission ... was, "How do you make it as much like the experience the audiences had in the 1890s?" ' - 'Moulin Rouge' director Baz Luhrmann, on his adaptation of Puccini's 'La Bohème,' which opens this weekend on Broadway.
NEW YORK - If no opera can be over until the fat
lady sings, "La Bohème" on Broadway may run for a long, long time.
Australian director Baz Luhrmann is putting a cast of trim, talented 20-something singers
on stage in a century-old opera sung in Italian, convinced that audiences more attuned to
the pop sound of "The Lion King" and "Cabaret" will want to hear what
he's calling "the greatest love story ever sung." Mr. Luhrmann says his mission
is to "bring this work back to the audience it was meant for - and that's everybody.
And where are you going to find everybody as an audience in the theater today?
Broadway."
Based on the favorable reaction to a preview run in San Francisco, it looks as if it just
may work, sweeping in young theatergoers eager to see what the hip director of the musical
"Moulin Rouge" can do with another story set among young lovers in Paris.
"The Broadway smarties have said to us, 'You will fail,' " says Jeffrey Sellers,
a coproducer of the show. If they succeed, more opera on Broadway could follow. "If
this works, you'll see the announcement of three revivals of operas in the next six
months," says his partner, Kevin McCollum. "And remember, if you pick the right
ones, you don't have to pay royalties!"
"It's to be highly commended," says Jonathan Pell, artistic director of the
Dallas Opera, who went to "La Bohème" in San Francisco with a highly skeptical
attitude and came away impressed. "He has put on the stage Puccini's 'La Bohème.'
He's just opened it up to a new audience."
The performance Mr. Pell saw, he says, "was filled with young people who came to it,
I suspect, thinking that they were somehow going to see Nicole Kidman as Musetta.... At
the end, they were cheering like it was a rock concert." As part of the effort to
continue to attract a younger crowd of nontheater (or opera) goers, seats in the first two
rows of "La Bohème" on Broadway will cost just $20, sold each day two hours
before curtain.
Not 'Hamlet in Hawaii'
Puccini, who wrote the opera in 1896, set the
story of four young bohemians living together in Parisian garrets in the 1830s. Luhrmann
has moved the story to 1957 - not, he says, to change it, but to get closer to the
emotional truth of the original.
"I'm against 'Hamlet in Hawaii,' which is updating for the sake of trying to be
groovy, trying to be swingin'," Luhrmann says. The decision "came from our
mission, which was, 'How do you make it as much like the experience the audiences had in
the 1890s?' "
While today's audiences might have trouble relating to the clothing and lifestyles of the
1830s, he felt that 1957 would be accessible, while still being a close social and
economic match to the earlier period. "Any updating shouldn't be about adding extra.
It should be about revealing what is there," he says.
For most opera productions, principal singers might spend two or three weeks together in
rehearsal. This cast, which includes three different couples in the romantic leads of
Rodolfo and Mimi, began rehearsals more than three months ago.
Luhrmann gave the singers a huge stack of background material to read on the opera, says
David Miller, who'll play Rodolfo on opening night Sunday. The atmosphere at rehearsals,
says Eugene Brancoveanu, one of two singers who play Marcello, was "very supportive.
[Luhrmann] was able to trigger something ... that makes you go deep, deep into the
character."
The singers were given an English translation of the Italian text and then had to put that
into their own words. They spent about two weeks rehearsing the opera as a play in
English, using their own words, before singing a note. Later, in rehearsals, Luhrmann
would clap his hands, which meant the singers must switch from English to Italian or vice
versa, to make sure they knew what they were singing about.
The singers' own translations became the basis for the loose, colloquial English
translation that audiences will see.
In this version of opera, "It's not enough anymore to just stand on stage and sing.
You have to be able to act," says Alfred Boe, a tenor from northern England who'll
rotate in the role of Rodolfo. Getting to the meaning of the words, he says, matches the
"emotion in the music that Puccini wrote that makes the hair stand up on the back of
your head."
Luhrmann has also stripped away operatic conventions in the staging. The set, designed by
his wife, Catherine Martin (who won best Oscars art direction and best costume design for
"Moulin Rouge"), lets the audience see the artificiality of the production. They
watch stagehands moving sets and so on. "You show the trick," Luhrmann says, as
an act of honesty, inviting the audience to join the actors in believing in the story of a
tragic love. "It's unavoidably hyperromantic," he admits. "Of course, the
piece works you over. Of course, you're being emotionally manipulated. But you choose to
be."
"Look, we're not hiding anything," Ms. Martin says. "It's just a bunch of
people onstage trying to make a show. So there's a kind of honesty and immediacy. We
remove the pretense."
Could you audition for the 11th time?
To find a cast of "triple threats" -
singers in their 20s who could master Puccini's three-octave range, be convincing actors,
and look the part - involved auditioning more than 2,000 people. Some were called back as
many as 11 times before winning their part.
While opera singers in their 20s are unlikely to have hit their vocal peak, reviews from
San Francisco generally praised these "Bohème" vocal performances as being of
high quality, sacrificing little vocally while presenting performers who can look and act
their parts convincingly.
At least one veteran opera star agrees heartily with this approach. "I don't want to
see someone 60 years old singing Rodolfo," says Marcello Giordani, one of the world's
leading tenors, who has sung Roldofo a dozen times at the world's most prestigious opera
houses, including New York's Metropolitan Opera and Milan's La Scala. "I would like
to see a beautiful couple on stage that are very credible and honest, so that I can feel
the reality of the story."
Singers from their teens to their 30s tried out, says Katherine Olsen, the show's
associate music director, who has worked on "La Bohème" for about two years.
"We finally narrowed it down to primarily opera singers or definitely people who had
studied opera and maybe had gone a slightly different path. We have a couple of people who
are from the Broadway world, but they had studied opera or are classically trained."
Ms. Olsen, who serves as voice and diction coach, will also work with the cast to see that
they don't overtax their voices. Even with the rotating casts, the leads must sing three
times a week - perhaps more often if they must substitute at the last moment. That's a
heavy load for any opera singer, even young and eager ones.
She's hoping to set up an informal training school for all the cast, including the chorus
members. "They're not going to do this show forever," she says. "We want to
have a revolving door for them so they can come in and out of the show. It just builds
them stronger."
"We can't run this like 'Les Miz' or 'Phantom' because our vocal standard has got to
be so much higher," says Olsen, who was trained at the Juilliard School. "It's
got to be a really first-rate vocal standard. Or else why do opera?"
Earning a steady paycheck
Olsen is already planning for a long run - and
perhaps for a touring version of the show, something that has been rumored. "We're
already auditioning all the time," she says. "It's going to be such a wonderful
place for a young opera singer to get an opportunity to make a steady paycheck, to be in
New York, to be on the audition circuit, and to actually learn on their feet how to
perform opera."
Coming in, she was at first skeptical. The singers are miked (subtly) and a 28-piece
ensemble uses two synthesizers to create the illusion of a 60- or 70-piece opera orchestra
playing the full Puccini score. "I'm very anti-electronic music, and I tell you, the
sound that comes from the orchestra, I don't know how they do it ... they sound absolutely
beautiful," she says.
With only one intermission and a brisk pace - which musical director Constantine
Kitsopoulos says mimics the way Arturo Toscanini conducted it a century ago - some
audience members in San Francisco were fooled into thinking the opera had been cut. But
every note is still there.
Luhrmann's 1990 Australian Opera production, on which this $7.5 million production (far
from the biggest budget on Broadway) is based, was mounted when he and "C.M.,"
as he refers to his wife, were in their 20s themselves. For the couple, "It's a sort
of farewell kiss to that whole bohemian youth of our lives."
After "Bohème" is born, and he takes a rest, Luhrmann must head back to what he
calls his "day job" - making movies. Next up is "Alexander the Great,"
a big-budget epic starring Leonardo DiCaprio, whom Luhrmann launched into teen-idol status
in his 1996 "Romeo + Juliet."
________________________________
Opera
'La Bohème' Has Different Versions
By Justin Glanville, The Herald Tribune
4 December 2002
NEW YORK (AP) - There are at least six different
versions of "La Bohème" on Broadway.
Baz Luhrmann's new production of Puccini's opera features three different sets of lead
actors and two sets of actors in supporting roles who perform on a rotating basis.
The unusual arrangement creates a show that has a different look and sound depending on
which night you see it.
"We're all trying to do our own thing," says Wei Huang, one of the three
actresses playing Mimi, the female lead. "We have a similar structure to our
performances, but lots of small details are different."
The singing and acting vary, of course, but other aspects of the show change, too.
Different actors wear different costumes, individually tailored to their personalities,
and the conductor alters the pace of the musical accompaniment depending on who is
singing.
Variety was not Luhrmann's goal in casting the show with rotating players. It was a matter
of simple necessity. Traditional opera houses schedule only a few performances over a
period of several weeks to allow voices ample time to recover between shows.
Luhrmann's production, by contrast, will be running a typical Broadway schedule of eight
performances a week. Not even the strongest opera voice could handle that workout.
Finding and preparing three casts was one of the most challenging aspects in bringing the
$6.5 million production to Broadway. For one thing, it inflated the budget for the show,
which has the largest cast payroll of any production on Broadway, according to producer
Jeffrey Seller.
It also required an epic, two-year casting effort that saw more than 2,000 performers
audition.
"It was like trying to find alluvial gold," Luhrmann says. "We sifted a lot
of sand."
He found David Miller, one of the actors playing the male lead of Rodolfo, first. The
young performer immediately impressed him. "He was someone who truly looked the
character, could act and is one of the very hot vocalists around," Luhrmann says.
Those were the three criteria - the "triple threat," in Luhrmann's words - by
which he judged all the candidates: They had to look like their characters and be able to
sing and act equally well.
In a typical opera house production of "La Bohème," brilliant singing is the
lone casting consideration; looking the part and having acting skills are beside the
point. As a result, the leads are usually played by well-established singers in their 30s,
40s or 50s, although Puccini's characters are in their 20s.
In the Broadway show, the leads are all 30 or younger. The decision to cast young players
was based on both artistic and financial considerations.
"This is an opera about twentysomething Bohemians living the impoverished Bohemian
life in the garrets above Paris," says producer Kevin McCollum. "In more
conventional productions you'll see a Rodolfo who's 40 and a Mimi who's in her mid-30s who
sings marvelously but who's pushing 200 pounds. You get a great musical performance but as
an audience you don't necessarily connect."
And from a marketing standpoint, says Seller, it's important to have young, vibrant
singers to attract an audience that isn't typically interested in opera.
Once Luhrmann had selected three Mimis and three Rodolfos, he and his team decided, based
on vocal compatibility and chemistry, which pairs fit best together.
Lisa Hopkins, for example, was paired with Jesus Garcia. "I think Jesus and I just
played off of each other really well," Hopkins says. "We found a lot of humor in
the roles that you normally don't see between Mimi and Rodolfo."
When the cast was set, Luhrmann had formed an international group of leads: three
Americans, the others British, Russian and Chinese.
The duos rehearsed mostly separately, so that each actor could develop a unique take on
the role and a rapport with his or her partner. As a result, rehearsals dragged on for
seven weeks, almost twice as long as a normal Broadway rehearsal schedule.
"I don't think any of us realized how difficult it would be to give equal time to
each Mimi and Rodolfo, to let them go on the same exploration of getting to know their
characters," says David Crooks, the assistant director. "That psychologically
took more than Baz imagined."
"It killed me," says Luhrmann. "I was on the floor from 10 in the morning
to 10 at night with the three casts. It tested me to my extreme."
The Mimis and Rodolfos had to be able to perform outside their primary pairings, too, in
case their usual partner ever got sick and couldn't perform. During group rehearsals,
Luhrmann would suddenly call on Miller to perform opposite Hopkins, for example, often
midway through an act.
There also are several understudies for Rodolfo and Mimi (they perform regularly in the
ensemble).
"They all had to be able to swap around," Luhrmann says. "It was like
solving a complex mathematical equation."
Because the six principal actors rehearsed together periodically, one actor would
sometimes find an idea for his or her own performance in observing another's.
Hopkins recalls watching Miller and Ekaterina Solovyeva, his Mimi, rehearse a scene from
Act 1, in which Mimi and Rodolfo meet and fall in love. It led to a breakthrough in her
own performance.
"David gave Ekaterina this look during their embrace, and that was the moment you
realized they were falling in love," she recalls. "Jesus and I didn't have a
moment like that. So that was something we worked on."
Miller's performance in that scene, in turn, had been inspired by watching Huang and her
Rodolfo, Alfred Boe.
"I watched how they were doing the scene - a look here, a shift of the body weight
there," Miller says. "They were actually listening to each other, and for a
while I was just acting like I was listening."
The lead actors' performances take on a different flavor depending on the actor playing
the painter Marcello and his lover, Musetta, the second leads: Eugene Brancoveanu and Ben
Davis play Marcello; Jessica Comeau and Chloe Wright are their respective Musettas.
"I work off what I'm given," says Boe. "Eugene is a very spontaneous
character on stage, very lively. Sometimes paint flies and hits you. Ben is calmer. So I
have different reactions."
The music and costumes change, too, according to who is on stage.
Musical director Constantine Kitsopoulos uses slightly different tempos for different
singers.
"Take Ekaterina," he says. "She is very emotionally intense in Act 3. She
tends to sit in the emotion and she needs me to move her through things a little bit,
tempo-wise."
Huang, another Mimi, requires exactly the opposite treatment. "Wei likes to move
through things quickly. I end up having to pull her back and say, 'Let's let the audience
experience this emotion.'"
The actors' costumes, meanwhile, were designed with their personalities and body types in
mind.
"David Miller's leather jacket is very much the classic Marlon Brando bike
jacket," explains Catherine Martin, Luhrmann's wife and the show's co-costume
designer and set designer. "Alfred Boe's is much slimmer, like a professional
motorcycle jacket.
"It's all about the physical differences of the players. David is very broad; he has
an all-American feel about him. Alfred is shorter, agile. He's very comedic and a little
self-deprecatory."
One unforeseen plus of having multiple casts, Luhrmann says, is that people have been
seeing the show more than once to compare the performers. At least, that's what happened
in San Francisco, where "La Bohème" had a pre-Broadway tryout this fall.
"They argue about which couple was the best," Luhrmann says, a bemused
expression on his face. "That's been a surprise, something we didn't quite
expect."
________________________________
Meet the Cast
By Ashley Cross, New York Post
24 November 2002
Ever the perfectionist, Baz Luhrmann spent two years auditioning 3,000 hopefuls from around the world to find three Mimis and three Rodolfos (who will rotate to save their voices). Here's who's who:
"The Red Cast"
David Miller:
Hometown: Littleton, Colo.
Has a masters on Opera Theater from Oberlin and performed at the White House for President
Clinton. After "La Bohème," he'll perform in a one-act opera in La Scala, Italy
- in a role written specifically for him.
"He's dangerous, tall - so handsome. He looks like someone out of N*SYNC. " -
Luhrmann.
Ekaterina Solovyeva:
Hometown: St. Petersburg, Russia
Disappeared right before the show went into previews in San Francisco; upon her return,
Luhrmann realized she was completely freaking out and hired a vocal coach to help her.
Luhrmann has said that the first time he heard her sing, "the hairs stood up on the
back of my neck."
"The White Cast"
Alfred Boe:
Hometown: Lancashire, England
Boe was discovered singing arias while working as a car mechanic. Also, he has represented
Great Britian in the "Lyric Tenor of the World" competition. He made his Royal
Opera Debut just this year before moving to America to be part of Luhrmann's production,
and says he's "the only Rodolfo to wear jeans: Diesel, of course."
Wei Huang:
Hometown: Shanghai, China
Huang graduated from Brooklyn College with a masters in opera this year. Before that she
studied at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Huang has played Mimi three times before,
but says Luhrmann made the whole cast "read through it for weeks before we ever sang.
He said it helped us discover the 'truth' of each line."
"The Blue Cast"
Jesus Garcia:
Hometown: League City, Texas
Garcia won the 2001 Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions, which sounds a lot like
a super-highbrow version of "American Idol." Won raves during previews in San
Francisco; one critic wrote, "His lean, dark looks, flashing smile and caressing
tone- close your eyes and he might be a young Pavoratti."
Lisa Hopkins:
Hometown: Salt Lake City
Like Max Fischer in "Rushmore," Hopkins wanted to study opera and so founded a
company at her insitute of higher learning - Yale. Says her vocal coach "knew I would
get cast, because she said that I looked like that lady with the long red hair from
'Moulin Rouge.' "
________________________________
About
the Mimis and Rodolfos
By Jesse Hamlin, Robert Hurwitt, Steven Winn Sunday, San Fransisco Chronicle
29 September 2002
There are three Mimis and three Rodolfos in Baz Luhrmann's "La Bohème." Here's a little bit about them:
LISA HOPKINS
Age: 24
Nationality: American
Experience: Born in Simi Valley, Hopkins lived in seven states while growing up. She began
voice lessons at 16 and immediately "knew what I was going to do with my life."
Opera kicked in during her undergraduate years in New Haven, where she founded the Yale
College Opera and played Cleopatra in Handel's "Julius Caesar." She has studied
at the Manhattan School of Music and spent a year and half working on multimedia concerts
in Austria.
Now you know: Hopkins, who describes herself as "a very active Mormon," was
described by her high school principal as a mixture of Maria Callas and Lucille Ball.
"I had no idea who Callas was at the time," she says. "Now I'm obsessed
with her."
Hopkins' viewpoint: "I knew nothing about Broadway," Hopkins confesses. Visits
to "Rent," "Beauty and the Beast" and "Thoroughly Modern
Millie" were "thoroughly enjoyable." Hopkins believes Mimi is "often
played as a simple, innocent, wide-eyed girl. She's no innocent. She loves God and her
intentions are good, but let's put it this way: She hasn't stopped herself from getting
involved with men who can take care of her. Rodolfo may be the first man she really falls
in love with."
-- Steven Winn
ALFRED BOE
Age: 29
Nationality: British
Experience: As a Lancashire teen, Boe tagged along with his sister to an amateur opera
society. He was smitten by a girl he met and decided to stick around and give singing a
whirl. The lead role in "West Side Story" led to a stint with London's D'Oyly
Carte, training at the Royal College of Music and principal roles at the Scottish
Opera-Go-Round and Glyndebourne Touring Opera (his first Rodolfo).
Now you know: Boe's career-making break came when he was working in a garage,
spray-painting and panel-beating cars at age 19. "A customer heard me singing along
to 'West Side Story' on the radio," he recalls, "gave me his business card and
suggested I audition for his company in London."
Boe's viewpoint: "Opera sparks off so many emotions in me," says Boe, who
specializes in bel canto roles. "Being able to portray emotion through my acting and
my voice is an amazing experience." The Broadway "Boheme" is "a big
risk," the tenor says, "but everything in life is a risk. We want to make this
music available to everyone, which is just what Puccini wanted."
-- Steven Winn
WEI HUANG
Age: 25
Nationality: Chinese
Experience: Growing up in the industrial city of Jiang Xi, Huang was a natural singer.
When she was 14, a music teacher happened to hear her sing and brought her to study at the
provincial arts school. She received her operatic training at the Shanghai Conservatory of
Music and got a master's degree in vocal performance at Brooklyn College, where she sang
the role of Pamina in Mozart's "The Magic Flute." Winner of the 1998
International Singing Competition in Budapest, Huang also trained at the International
Institute of Vocal Arts in Italy, where she sang the role of Juliet in Gounod's
"Romeo et Juliette."
Now you know: As a child, Huang wanted to be a pop singer and never dreamed she'd find
herself on the operatic stage. Now, "I want to develop different roles and sing in
major opera houses in America and Europe," she says. And on Broadway, "if
there's a good opportunity for me." She listens to Christian music every morning.
"I really feel it gives me strength."
Huang's viewpoint: "When people think of opera they think it's old, not modern. What
Baz (Luhrmann) is doing is drawing people into the story. That's why he set it in 1957.
The singers are very close in age to the characters, and Baz's way of directing is very
convincing, very detailed. No matter how big or small the role, he really digs in and
works hard on every detail. I've never worked with a director like that. You really feel
like you're performing in a film."
-- Jesse Hamlin
DAVID MILLER
Age: 29
Nationality: American
Experience: Miller began singing at his Littleton, Colo., high school and received a
bachelor's degree in music and a master's in opera theater at the Oberlin Conservatory of
Music. He has about 30 roles under his belt, he says, including Alfredo in "La
Traviata," which he sang with the Washington Opera Company and at the Pittsburg
Opera, where he also sang the role of Romeo in "Romeo et Juliette." He also
performed at Opera Australia (in "The Pearl Fishers"), at the opera house in
Manaus, Brazil, and will sing the role of the doctor in Marco Tutino's new opera
"Vita" premiering at La Scala in Milan.
Now you know: Miller wanted to be a pilot and an astronaut. "When I was in high
school, I was headed for the Air Force Academy," says Miller, who sang in the school
choir, where "they roped me into doing a musical. It was 'Annie.' I loved it. I was
hooked on performing." He wasn't sure what kind of music he wanted to sing, but he
knew he needed solid classical training. The first opera he heard at Oberlin was "La
Bohème," "and that turned me on to opera." When not rehearsing or
performing, Miller plays DJ at home, spinning "progressive trance-techno music."
Miller's viewpoint: "The challenge of singing this role is finding the newness in
music that has been heard so many times." Luhrmann helped enormously by having the
performers put the text into their own English vernacular, "so we'd have more
connection to the words," Miller says, "and find character choices based on our
own personalities." They did the piece in their own words without music, then in
Italian, then sang it. The music is ingenious, Miller says, but "a lot of times
people get so wrapped up in the music the drama is lost. With Baz, we're investing a big
chunk of our time and energy into the drama. He's made everything so specific that the
drama is brought up to the level of the music."
-- Jesse Hamlin
EKATERINA SOLOVYEVA
Age: 28
Nationality: Russian
Experience: Born in St. Petersburg, Solovyeva graduated from the St. Petersburg State
Conservatory in 1994 and entered the Academy of Young Opera Singers at the Mariinsky
Theatre (formerly known as the Kirov). She has performed widely for the past eight years,
in opera and on the concert stage (with pianist Larissa Gergieva) in Russia, England,
Israel, Finland, Poland and the United States. Among the roles in her repertoire are
Babarina in "Le Nozze di Figaro," Thibault in "Don Carlo," Zerkina in
"Don Giovanni," Giulietta in "Tales of Hoffmann" and Musetta in
"La Bohème."
Now you know: Solovyeva comes from an artistic family. Her father, an art restorer for the
Hermitage Museum, recently restored the Horses of Claude on St. Petersburg's Bridge of
Anichkov, and her uncle is the renowned ballet dancer Yuri Solovyeva.
Solovyeva's viewpoint: "I think that he's (Luhrmann) an amazing director. He gives
you an opportunity to interpret what you think, and he helps you develop the character.
It's been a long while I've been dreaming about playing this role. It's the best thing
I've ever done."
-- Robert Hurwitt
JESUS GARCIA
Age: 25
Nationality: American
Experience: Born in the Houston suburb of League City, Texas, Garcia began training in
opera while an undergraduate at the University of North Texas. He is in his second year as
a resident artist with the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, is a recipient of the
Placido Domingo Fellowship Award and won the 2001 Metropolitan Opera National Council
Auditions (among many other awards). He has performed with the Opera Festival of New
Jersey, the Spoleto Festival, Palm Beach Opera and Opera Company of Philadelphia, among
others. Principal roles include Almaviva in "Il Barbiere di Siviglia," Don
Ottavio in "Don Giovanni," Pinkerton in "Madama Butterfly," Elvino in
"La Sonnambula" and, at the Academy of Vocal Arts, Rodolfo in "La
Bohème."
Now you know: Garcia had never seen or heard an opera when he began studying the form (he
was inspired by a Pavorotti CD). He is in the process of writing an electronic rock album
("I write poetry and set a lot of it to music") and is writing a film for an
independent company he has formed with friends in New York.
Garcia's viewpoint: "It's hard to find a really great production of anything, one
that's visually stunning with just amazing acting. It seems like the opera world right now
is more concerned with serving the artists than serving the art. This 'La Bohème' is
really about getting down to the naked truth of the piece and creating a very alive,
vibrant experience. The audience is giving us their time, and we should be able to
transport them into this world. And it's so artistically done, it's just such a pleasure
to be involved. "
For more insight into the casting of the production, feel free to read Vanessa Conlin's 'Bringing La Bohème to Broadway'
