2003 Production News Articles
Baz's Boheme eyes up Tony
By Seamus Bradley, Sydney Morning Herald
14 May 2003
Australian director Baz Luhrmann's $US7.5 million ($11.6 million) Broadway production of Puccini's opera La Boheme has been nominated for six Tony awards, America's most important theatre honours.
Four other operas have been nominated in the awards' 56-year history, but Luhrmann's post-modern version of the epic tale of love marks the first time an opera has been nominated in the best musical category.
Luhrmann, who was on the Australian set of Alexander The Great and not available for comment yesterday, has been nominated for the Best Director (musical) award.
The opera, relocated from the 1830s to Paris in 1957, is also competing for best set design, best lighting design, best costumes and best orchestrations.
But no matter how the opera - which opened in New York in December - performs on awards night, it has already made Tony history. A special award for excellence will be presented to the 10 principal performers who rotate through the opera's four main roles, the first time all performers who share roles have received a Tony.
Twenty-eight shows are competing for the 2003 awards which will presented on June 8. Hairspray has 13 nominations, Movin' Out has 10; Nine The Musical has eight and Long Day's Journey Into Night has seven.
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Baz's Broadway opera a hit
By Seamus Bradley, The Age
14 May 2003
Australian director Baz Luhrmann's $US7.5 million ($A11.6 million) Broadway production of Puccini's opera La Boheme has been nominated for six Tony awards, US theatre's most important honours.
Four other operas have been nominated for Tonys in the awards' 56-year history, but Luhrmann's post-modern version of Puccini's 1896 tale of love marks the first time an opera has been nominated in the best musical category.
Luhrmann - who was on the Australian set of Alexander The Great and not available for comment yesterday - has been nominated for the best director (musical) award.
Luhrmann, who has been married to production designer Catherine Martin for six years, has announced that the couple are expecting their first child.
La Boheme is the Moulin Rouge director's first
Broadway production and marks his first Tony Award nomination.
The opera, relocated from the 1830s to Paris in 1957, is also competing for best set design, best lighting design, best costume design and best orchestrations.
But no matter how the opera - which opened in New York in December - performs in the competition, it has already made Tony history. A special award for excellence will be presented to the 10 principal performers who rotate through the opera's four main roles, the first time all performers who share roles have received a Tony.
Twenty-eight shows are competing for the 2003 honours. La Boheme is beaten in the number of nominations by Hairspray with 13, Movin' Out with 10, Nine The Musical with eight and Long Day's Journey Into Night with seven. About 710 US theatre professionals vote for the awards, which will be presented on June8 in New York.
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Question and Answer - Baz
Luhrmann
By Paul Wontorek, Broadway.com
7 April 2003
Baz Luhrmann may have just made his Broadway debut a
handful of months ago with a highly-acclaimed staging of Puccini's La Bohème, but he's
been on the radar of theater fans for years. Starting with 1992's Strictly Ballroom,
Australian Luhrmann seduced audiences with his highly-theatrical cinematic
stylings--over-the-top performances, a vivid color palate and nonstop energy. His
follow-up offerings seemed even more geared to theatergoers-a hip Romeo + Juliet and
Moulin Rouge, a sweeping romantic pop musical set in turn of the century Paris that
finally made Luhrmann a household name. Next up is the immense epic Alexander the Great,
starring former collaborators Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicole Kidman. After its release, in
late 2004, Luhrmann is ours again, with stage adaptations of both Strictly Ballroom and
Moulin Rouge on the fast track. Broadway.com recently sat down with the charismatic
director at the Mercer Hotel during a recent stay in New York City.
So, how are things over at the Broadway Theatre?
We've been battered very significantly in the last few months because of war, snow, the
musician's strike and then just recently we lost a show to what everyone thought was [an
act of] terrorism. We really took a beating in that time. And we've come back now but I
was away so all the troops were shaken.
You've been in to check up on the cast?
As you know, there are three casts. I've seen two and I've got one more to see and then
I'll get everyone together for notes sessions and then start doing some rehearsals.
How are your stars holding up?
For a production that is absolutely human--the reason it's so expensive to run is that
even the sets are not mechanized. Even the sets have human beings. We have more musicians
than we're supposed to. We have a lot of people in that show. And what that means is that
it's absolutely about the discipline of commitment. So keeping that high is a real art.
But I was pretty impressed. I've got some notes about not just re-remembering a
performance but re-inventing it every night. But it's pretty impressive. That company
itself is full of love for the joy of what they're making. They recognize an unusual
opportunity.
I went in the other night and there were people sitting behind me who must have bought
their tickets at the box and they were like "Oh, I've never seen a play like
this…they're singing Italian." But by the end…I mean, I was moved by these
people. Because it's one thing for sophisticates to go but these people were clearly from
out-of-town and by the end they stood up with everyone else and the guy, when people
started saying "Bravo!" he went, "Yeah, bravo…bravo, that's
right!" So [our company] recognizes what we're doing and how special and precious it
is. They were very worried when we got hit really hard that it might go away.
So you're here in New York looking at new cast members?
I'm here rehearsing new cast members because we're going to announce a tour pretty soon.
I'm just out checking theaters for summer 2004. We'll go out and do a tour for a year.
It'll take that long because it's not like we can just bang the show in. We have to
actually design it specific to each house and every house has bid.
We're about to enter Tony season on Broadway. How important is it for you to see the
show honored?
It's easy to say this, but I really believe in the adage that nominations really are great
because they are a shining light on a handful of shows or films that are remarkable that
year. And it's not a horserace--that one show is better than the other is kind of
pointless if they're both successful. However, the competition is really important because
it engages people in an excited way in focusing on these shows and it's great for box
office. Goodness knows every single show on Broadway needs a new hit of attention. So,
certainly if we get nominated I'll be very proud of that and I hope what it does is helps
us with our big message.
The Tony committee seems to be stalling on issue of how to nominate your cast members.
What would be your ideal solution?
If it's about acknowledging who made a show work, I don't see how they could nominate a
single person from La Bohème because the very nature and success of the work has been
that we went out of our way to find three absolutely and extraordinarily different
Rodolfos and Mimis and that the promise of the show is delivered every night but in a
different way. And in truth, if you're trying to say what the best performance was, the
performance has only worked made up of three components. So it's a collective work. I mean
I wish there was an ensemble award because that, we'd love to be nominated for. I'm not
sure what they'll do, but I implore them that it would be absolutely against the very
fabric of which this production has been made to identify a single person because it's
just not the truth. I think it would be so right to nominate all three. What I'm saying is
the role, however you manifest it, requires more than one person to realize it. It's
technically what's happened with us. We've had to realize it with three people.
You're committing to bringing Strictly Ballroom to Broadway. This piece has been with
you for 20 years. Didn't it originate as a stage piece when you were young?
I did as a play at drama school. Then I had my own opera and theater company at the same
time. So I did it as a play and then we did it at a theater festival in Czechoslovakia.
And I turned it into a movie-the other night, Bill Clinton said he's seen it six times. I
was very impressed. I thought, why didn't you say that when you were president? And now,
it's taking a final step back in full circle to become a musical.
Where did the idea of it come from?
I was at drama school and I was fascinated with this idea which I continued throughout the
Red Curtain Trilogy [which also includes Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge] of primary myth
uniting…that story shape that can play through time and geography placing it in
heightened creative worlds. And it's the stuff of which musicals are made but kind of more
to prevent metaphor. It's like Moliere, you present and archetypal character, you
celebrate primary human emotions but you have a sort of metaphorical idea underneath. I
was a ballroom dancer as a kid. I needed to set the show in a world that was exotic and
strange but close in that it could be Hollywood or it could be Washington. You know, the
fading star, the oppressive regime…
I know you've had a few workshops of the show recently. How far along are you?
I've done several workshops and I'm about to make a commitment about the musical team. I
won't say who they are because it'll be a big announcement and I need to make sure that
we're secure on everything. It's the project I'd like to do after Alexander the Great. So
I guess we'd get going in 2005.
I'm a huge fan of Moulin Rouge, which I'm sure you hear all the time…
Not everyone loved Moulin Rouge. People can come up and spit at you. When you work on
something for a long time, you're happy to hear from anyone who likes it.
Moulin Rouge really paved the way for the success of Chicago. What did you think of
the film?
I saw Chicago here on opening night, where [Chicago producer] Harvey Weinstein very
generously acknowledged our contribution in the journey. I am over the moon that we kicked
the door in with Moulin Rouge. My mission was to get movie musicals back into popular
culture. And Harvey picked up the cue with Chicago. I mean, I've been part of the
[development] journey of Chicago for years with Madonna and then Nicole [Kidman] and Liza
Minnelli and I think it's a great, great thing that a musical has won the Academy Award.
Now what we've got to focus on is that next year there needs to be two. I mean it's on the
agenda but let's not drop the ball. I think Rob [Marshall] did extraordinary work in it
because he really did find a language for it. It's really well-balanced. Everyone's
talking about doing musicals and I think that's great. John Woo wants to do one. The
mission has been a one-two punch--to get the musical back on and now to make sure next
year that it doesn't become an obscure footnote--that there were a couple of musicals that
came along and it was one bright, shining spot.
It makes me nervous to hear that everyone wants to make a movie musical. It's a very
specific art.
There are more folks who can do it than you would think and they come from different
corners. Who knows? It may be John Woo. But the thing about musicals is that for a genre
that expresses such exaltation and joy, it's so bloody hard because you're working in
every medium. You're working in the dramatic art, the written art, the musical art, the
visual art…every single time in Moulin Rouge when Nicole would kiss, we would have to
strip her makeup down and re-build it because the world has to be perfect. It has to be
heightened. It's not naturalism. So they are infuriating things to make but worth it. I
mean, I will make another musical in film but at the moment I'm otherwise engaged in the
epic issue. My work here is done.
There are dozens of great stage musicals that haven't made it to the screen yet. Are
there any that you think would be naturals for that transfer?
If you're talking about me personally… Look, there are quicker ways to make money and
get famous. I love Guys and Dolls. Les Miz, Phantom…I think ever since I was a kid. I
remember being, like, 29 and sitting down with Andrew Lloyd Webber and hearing him say,
"You must do my Phantom." I remember going up to [producer] Cameron
[Macintosh]'s house where he showed me a model of Paris for the Les Miz film. So for all
these years, people have been asking me to do these shows, but the thing I've always been
interested in creating my own personal pieces. Moulin Rouge is an Orphean story--the
journey of a young, youthful idealist and the transition through the underworld and
essentially growing from his scars; the experimentation with music and the popular
vernacular and so on. I chose to make that movie for personal reasons--it's art that I
hope there will be an audience for but that I want to see up on screen personally. So,
having said that, can Guys and Dolls be made into a successful musical? Yes. Nicole Kidman
as Sarah? Fantastic! But [with Moulin Rouge], we came in with a sledgehammer and went
wham! in your face and said you have got to accept the contract--in or out. By the time
[Christian and Satine] dance across the moon, you are either 100% signed on, or you're
going "Is this really happening? Let's leave. Get your bag, Marge." We were so
aggressive about the contract. Now with Rob's picture, it's Greek chorus. It's like
Cabaret. It's contained within a world. But Guys and Dolls is fundamentally breaking into
song. So you need someone who's going to be able to create--Tim Burton, for example could
create a world. Now whether he can do a musical or not, I don't know but I always
thought-wouldn't you have loved to have seen Edward Scissorhands break out into song? I
would have. You wouldn't have blinked if he'd sang a number. It was such a heightened
world and character.
So I guess I'll have to get over my dream of seeing you bring Rent to the screen?
No, they came to me with Rent a long time ago. Not my thing. But what I'm saying is,
please don't read it as arrogance or that I'm saying it's a bad idea. It's just that I've
only got so many years in my life and I want to be making things that are about resolving
things in my own… I want to make sure I'm making something personal. It's not like I
leave it at the office, you know?
I know you're thinking of bringing Moulin Rouge to Las Vegas. Can you tell me more
about that?
Next weekend I've got to make a decision. I'm going to Vegas because two casinos are
bidding for the concept of a Moulin Rouge theatrical show. A theater would be built and
the club as well--the whole world. And we'll do everything. In Vegas, you get a scale
which you get nowhere else, so it could be intriguing. So I'll see. I'll make a decision
in the next few weeks. I love that environmental work. And I guess what you'd have is that
Satine could be guest stars, so you'd get really serious players coming in and doing six
weeks a throw. And then booking a lot of cabaret in it as well. Edgy, interesting cabaret
work. I always see there's so much talent and I know I could take 'x' and make it work,
but hey, I haven't got the time. Vegas is okay for 48 hours but it's not really a
sophisticated experience but what if there was like an old Sands nightclub like the Rat
Pack. A very cool experience, with different layers. I think it's a great environmental
piece. I mean imagine, Satine comes down the middle on a swing. You want to be in the
space, I think. So we'll see.
Let's just keep Celine Dion off the Satine swing…
We'll be across the road from Celine, I guess. It'll be Celine and Satine on the strip.
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Hopkins '01 heads off to Broadway
By Michael Schulman, Yale Daily News
7 February 2003
Less than two years ago, Lisa Hopkins '01 was graduating from Yale with a degree in theater studies. Now, she is living out her wildest dreams as the leading lady in one of Broadway's biggest shows of the year, Baz Luhrmann's production of "La Boheme."
In his controversial but critically acclaimed production, Luhrmann -- director of the films "Moulin Rouge" and "Romeo and Juliet" -- has set the opera in 1950s Paris. In his hopes to find young singers who could also give passionate performances, Luhrmann scoured the globe in an international search for the perfect cast.
Hopkins shares the lead role, Mimi, with two other actresses, who rotate in the role to avoid vocal strain.
For Hopkins, the road to Broadway has been filled with lucky breaks and hard work. Her parents -- who live in Salt Lake City and are devout Mormons -- home-schooled Lisa until the age of 9. Hopkins said that it was her mother, a Juilliard-trained pianist, who first instilled in her the drive to succeed.
"Any form of vision that I would have conceived of, my mother basically taught me how to attack it and get it," Hopkins said.
So when Hopkins first discovered her talent for singing at her brother's Eagle Scout program, her mother immediately set up an audition with the best-known voice teacher in Salt Lake City.
Hopkins arrived at Yale already dreaming of a career in opera. Everything she studied at Yale was designed to make her a better opera performer. She studied languages to perfect her diction, literature to analyze librettos, and even found a way to relate a Group IV requirement to opera -- by writing a paper about Philip Glass' opera "Einstein on the Beach."
Junior year, Hopkins decided to major in theater studies. And while most theater studies alumni may be starving artists crying over their degrees -- and ruing the day they gave up political science -- Hopkins insists that her experience in the major was directly responsible for her big break.
Hopkins recalled her final project for Deb Margolin's "Introduction to Performance Concepts" seminar -- an original solo performance piece in which she dressed up as Catwoman, complete with fishnet tights, a black leotard and an imitation black leather jacket from the Chapel Square Mall, which she bought for $2.
"My whole show was about pure love of Christ, and I can't even remember how Catwoman plays into this whole thing, but it did," she said.
In fact, it was that same leather jacket that Hopkins believes made her stand out in an audition for "Boheme." She knew that she had to look "funky" in order to fit into Luhrmann's pop-inspired vision for the show.
While pursuing theater studies at Yale, Hopkins' ambitions in opera were in full steam. Her mother, hoping to find her daughter the best voice teacher there was, boldly telephoned the secretary of famed soprano Beverly Sills, hoping she could recommend a good teacher.
"Certainly Pavarotti studies with somebody, was her idea," laughed Hopkins.
Her mother eventually got the home number of Marlena Malas, who Hopkins said was "the legendary voice teacher of the century." By a stroke of luck, she got through to Malas' husband and "hit it off." Lisa had gotten an appointment to sing for Malas.
For the audition, she needed a French aria to add to her repertoire. Hopkins had never spoken a word of French, but it just so happened that a student from Paris lived right beneath her in Saybrook -- and Hopkins had found her very own diction coach.
But the audition for Malas was still a nerve-wracking prospect. When Hopkins showed up at her door, a small woman in a pink jumpsuit appeared and snapped, "What do you want?"
Hopkins answered, "I want a legendary voice and I want you to take me seriously." She listed all the world-famous opera houses where she someday hoped to sing, including the Met, the Covent Gardens, and La Scala.
To which Malas replied: "Well my dear, that's very bold. Let's hear you sing."
As soon as Hopkins finished her first piece, she said Malas jumped up and said, "Well, you have a lot of bad habits, but your mother was exactly right. You will sing at all those places."
With that, Hopkins had found a new voice teacher and was admitted into Malas' training program in upstate New York. She was cast in "Threepenny Opera," and after the closing night, Hopkins remembers Malas pulling her aside and saying, "Dear, you have everything it takes to make it in this business."
Hopkins then returned to her junior year at Yale, with a renewed drive and passion for opera. She and a friend decided to found the Yale College Opera Company, which is still very much active five years later.
But just as her ambitions for her career seemed to be at their clearest, Hopkins was faced with one of the hardest decisions of her life.
Hopkins, who describes herself as "a very active member" of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, was 21, which is the traditional age for missionary work. It is also a crucial age for a singer's development. Hopkins realized that going on a mission would be a tremendous sacrifice, but in the end she decided that she wanted to follow her faith.
She signed up to go on a mission, not knowing where in the world she would end up for the next year and a half. By a phenomenal coincidence, Hopkins was assigned to go to Vienna, Austria -- the music capital of the world. There, she met musicians from all over the world and performed in 21 multimedia concerts, which were put on as part of her missionary work.
"I learned that my voice was not the priority but the vehicle that would propel whatever life mission I had," she said. "I knew that I wanted to be involved in large, multimedia, cross-genre sorts of things."
But it was not until she returned from Austria for her senior year at Yale that Hopkins learned that Baz Luhrmann, the master of crossing genres and mixing media, was holding auditions for a Broadway production of "La Boheme."
The opera, written by Giacomo Puccini in 1896, has become one of the most beloved operas of all time. But Luhrmann -- who had directed a version of the opera in his native Australia -- wanted to popularize it even more by bringing it out of the opera house and onto the Broadway stage.
At first, Hopkins auditioned for the part of Musetta, the flamboyant courtesan who is often played as a redhead, just like Hopkins. She gave what she now considers "a terrible audition" and didn't hear back from anyone for six months.
Hopkins was cramming in credits so that she could graduate, including a one-woman opera that she performed as her senior project for theater studies. Meanwhile, she had nearly forgotten about "La Boheme" -- until she got a call asking her to come back and audition as Mimi. Hopkins embarked on a months-long process of callbacks, until finally she got to audition for Luhrmann himself. Hopkins describes him as a man of "subdued insanity," with "a fire behind his eyes."
Looking back, Hopkins said she had confidence that she had nailed it.
"It was very clear that he was going to hire me. The atmosphere was one of just yes, yes, yes," she said.
Her first audition opposite Jesus Garcia, who now plays Rodolfo, convinced her she would get the lead role, Mimi.
"He and I clicked the instant we saw each other," she said. As soon as the two both hit the high C at the end of their love duet, Hopkins said, "There was just this 'wow' moment in the audition room."
But it would take one extra push to get the role. Hopkins was offered the understudy and promptly refused it. "I told them I was interested in being in the production -- I was on a big honesty kick."
With that, Hopkins landed the part of the third Mimi. She soon found herself shooting a commercial for the show directed by Luhrmann himself.
"Suddenly I was being launched into the world of Hollywood," she said. "I hadn't even dreamt this in Deb's class!"
Hopkins realized that she was part of a production that would, for better or worse, change the history of opera forever, she said.
"It was this revolutionary melding of opera, Hollywood and Broadway, in a way that had never been done before," Hopkins said.
After just over a month of rehearsal, the show opened in San Francisco to rave reviews, and then in November, it opened in the Broadway Theater.
Unlike most opera directors, Luhrmann stressed the importance of acting over singing. He did not even allow the actors to sing a note before they had become comfortable speaking their lines, first in English and then in the original Italian.
"He wouldn't let us go on until he believed that we owned the words that we were actually singing," she said.
Now, Hopkins performs as Mimi every Wednesday night and Saturday afternoon. At the same time, she is enrolled in the Manhattan School of Music, where she hopes to get her master's degree next winter. She expects to be performing in "La Boheme" for another year and a half.
With a train of remarkable successes behind her, and her ambitions still as strong as ever, Hopkins said that her life will be forever changed by Baz Luhrmann and "La Boheme."
"The air is just pregnant with this creative potential that we all need to carry on in the name of Baz, and in the name of opera, and in the name of Boheme," she said.
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Stage Reviews: Opera and poetry light up Broadway
By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette
5 February 2003
NEW YORK -- For all its aspiration to high art, theater is also commerce, nowhere more than in its showiest shop window, Broadway, which, for all its hidebound traditionalism, is always looking for something new to sell. That's one of its most engaging traditions -- its periodic willingness to co-opt other kinds of entertainment to brighten the bottom line.
We certainly seem to be in one of these expansive periods. You have to look pretty hard to find straight plays on Broadway (and even harder to find new plays), but crossover attractions proliferate so much that on a recent reviewing trip I might have been someone else. We might as well have sent our music critic to review Baz Luhrmann's lithe and passionate "La Boheme," our pop critic to the aggressive, preening "Def Poetry Jam," our dance critic to Twyla Tharp's "Movin' Out" or our book editor to the literary skirmishing of "Imaginary Friends."
The first two of these are my subjects today, two crossover entertainments designed to appeal to untraditional audiences, arriving on Broadway from the opposite ends of the traditional cultural continuum -- "La Boheme" stepping down from the posh precincts of grand opera, and "Def Poetry Jam" stepping up from street corners and clubs.
'La Boheme'
Actually, for Puccini to move to Broadway isn't a very big step. It's only a century since he was a musical showman with broad popular appeal, working in the "verisimo" style of heightened realism. And hasn't "La Boheme" already taken a longtime lease on Broadway in the updated, grunged down, freshly "verisimo" guise of "Rent"?
No, Broadway is perfectly at home with "La Boheme," and vice versa. But Puccini is not the star -- that nod goes to the inventive Baz Luhrmann and company. Luhrmann is the Australian director who has proved his stylistic depth and flourish along with a command of pop romantic yearning in his movies "Strictly Ballroom," "Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet" and "Moulin Rouge." He has opera chops, as well, and the bottom line is simple: As long as you don't boggle at simplistic plot leaps, "La Boheme" makes a lushly satisfying Broadway musical, with its soaring score, winning performances, very theatrical design and masterful sense of stage life.
That design is the work of Luhrmann's key collaborator and wife, Catherine Martin. She uses a palette of whites, blacks and voluptuously modulated grays for the costumes and three distinct settings, allowing just a lurid splash of color in each scene -- most notably the free-standing huge red neon sign advertising L'Amour atop the garret set of Acts 1 and 4 and Musetta's free-flowing red dress amid the street and cafe life of Act 2.
The stunning design is never static, because its artifice is italicized by the visible presence of the stagehands who move and angle it to allow us access. Theatrical convention trains us to regard a set as a frame for reality. Martin caters to this by extending the set out along the audience walls with functional rooms full of life. But at center stage, the visible artifice of stagehands and stage managers frames the key set pieces, making them an additional presence, ratcheting up our pleasurable sense of theatrical make-believe.
Projected subtitles (the show is sung in Italian) do the same, appearing variously above, below and on the set, calling attention to themselves by wittily using different type fonts to distinguish voices and moods.
The production's central motive is to return to Puccini the sense of vivid sensation he created in 1896. So his Paris of the 1840s is updated to 1957 (there are interpolated references to Brando and MGs) and the cast features young, attractive singers who necessarily lack the more developed vocal abilities of established opera stars. They are miked, of course, to the dismay of some music critics who see this "Boheme" as watered down. But in the Broadway context, it feels rich indeed.
Luhrmann and Martin create four distinct theatrical worlds. First is the rooftop garret with its looming "L'Amour," probably a perfume but also, of course, love itself, which hardly needs advertising, given the handsome youth of the cast and the rampant hormones of the story. The second world is the nighttime Left Bank, pulsating with skillfully sprawling life. Third is the dark canvass of the border town where the tale turns tragic -- this has the painterly bleakness of a modern Flemish master, for which special kudos to the lighting artistry of Nigel Levings. Act 4 returns to the same garret for the tragic climax, with the "L'Amour" now darkly ironic, its power off, electric red turned white. The only spot of color is the echo of it in Marcello's painting.
But by Luhrmann's fourth world, I mean, of course, theatricality itself, a continual presence heightening by contrast our emotional response.
Three pairs alternate Rodolfo and Mini while two alternate Marcello and Musetta. I saw Jess Garcia and Lisa Hopkins as the first, Ben Davis and Chloe Wright as the second. Each is persuasive, and the seven other name roles are all solid. But it is the ensemble of 30-plus and the active children's chorus of eight more which, in conjunction with the entire environment, generate most theatrical thrill.
Although the villains are poverty and tuberculosis, "La Boheme" has its contemporary parallels in many an AIDS play, with the same tale of love relationships corroded by despair. Even the young experience death; even young audiences, Luhrmann knows, respond to the full emotion of tragedy.
At Broadway Theatre, 1681 Broadway; call 1-800-432-7250.
[The rest of the article is about another production]
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A Bohemian rhapsody,
but not much bonhomie
By Phillip McCarthy, Sydney Morning Herald
27 January 2003
Also as -
New
York's battle of the Bohemes
By Phillip McCarthy, The Age
23 January 2003
Three major stagings of La Boheme are about to do battle in New York, writes Phillip
McCarthy.
Late one night in less than a few months' time,
three women named Mimi are going to fall down dead, sensationally before scores of people,
from respiratory illness just a few minutes and a few blocks apart in Manhattan.
In a city as terrorist-jumpy and biohazard-aware as New York, that might ordinarily be
enough to ignite a 2001-style anthrax panic.
In fact, the only people who should be quarantined are the producers and backers of three
competing versions of Puccini's
La Boheme who, in a rare theatrical alignment a bit like a celestial eclipse, have more
than 8200 seats to unload for their rival productions on a quiet midweek evening.
Are that many New Yorkers going to be up for an evening of fake snow and chilly Parisian
garrets after five months of their own winter nastiness?
It's on April 10 that Baz Luhrmann's
much-admired Broadway production of the Puccini favourite collides with the folks who feel
that they own Puccini in this town: the venerable, wealthy Metropolitan Opera and its
scrappier but innovative rival, the New York City Opera.
Baz or no Baz, both opera houses are rolling out their own La Bohemes, starting next
month, with orchestras considerably heftier than Luhrmann's miked Broadway band.
The timing is not exactly auspicious. Playing at the Broadway Theatre, Luhrmann's Boheme,
after edging up to ticket sales equivalent to 96 per cent houses in the holiday period,
slumped back to 82 per cent in the first week of the new year, according to Variety. Three
of the other big five musicals - Mamma Mia!, The Producers and The Lion King - also took
hits but recorded smaller drops of 5 to 10 per cent. The hottest show, Hairspray, was
steady at 100 per cent-plus.
At this delicate stage of La Boheme's Broadway run, the sudden glutting of the market -
the Met has a capacity of 3800 and the City Opera's State Theatre seats 2700 - is
something that Broadway Theatre producers focused on filling their own 1705-seat venue
could do without.
Someone is usually doing La Boheme in New York; it's a sure-fire moneymaker for both big
and amateur opera companies. But no opera is so mass-market that three heavily hyped,
expensively run productions of the same piece can happily coexist. And the two opera
houses have vast subscriber bases, meaning that many Boheme-compatible patrons are already
locked in and might pass on seeing another version of the same piece in the same season.
If you throw in the musical Rent - the long-running Broadway update of La Boheme that
moves the action from the Left Bank to the East Village - there's another 1100 seats
chasing a similar story of blighted young love, albeit with only the most fleeting nod at
Puccini's melodies.
"We're pretty confident that we are talking about different productions for different
markets," a spokeswoman for the Luhrmann version, Amy Jacobs, said. "There's
certainly no plan to alter how we sell it to a Broadway audience."
But just because it's not on Broadway doesn't mean that the Met's production, a Franco
Zeffirelli extravaganza, lacks Broadway glitz. With opulent sets, extravagant costumes and
an army of 130 extras, it's so over the top that some purists loathe it.
The Met has sprinkled 14 performances from February 19 until May 2. And, on March 28, City
Opera makes it a trifecta of Rodolfos and Mimis when the curtain goes up on eight
performances of its more stylishly minimalist version, which runs until the end of April.
"We're just hoping that the Broadway Boheme whets appetites for the opera so that
theatre-goers will want to come up here and see the real thing," the Met's director
of public affairs, Francois Giuliani, said. "Some people round here think it is good
that Broadway is exposing a new audience to the opera. On the other hand, some critics
feel that the microphones and the tiny orchestra de-emphasise the music and sell La Boheme
short. What would Puccini say?"
But is the empire striking back to protect its turf? Scorched earth is not untried
territory at the Met. When it moved into its current premises in the '60s it made sure
that its old gem of an opera house downtown was razed in case some upstart opera company
got ideas.
"Our schedules and casts are set years in advance, sometimes four or five, so when
this was set up the Broadway Boheme was just a twinkle in Baz Luhrmann's eye,"
Giuliani said. "I think our attitude is, 'We've been doing Boheme since 1900; we
don't yield to anyone."'
The stand-off over Puccini is interesting on another level. It lines up two flashy showmen
equally at home on stage and screen, Franco Zeffirelli and Baz Luhrmann, who both seem to
adore, in any medium, weepy love stories that end tragically. Years before Luhrmann put
his Romeo + Juliet on film, Zeffirelli did his own acclaimed screen version of the same
story.
Now it's rival stagings of La Boheme. Zeffirelli first did his for the Met in 1981 and it
has become one of the house's big money-spinners. Luhrmann first did his for Opera
Australia in 1991 before reinventing it for Broadway after Moulin Rouge.
For their part, the two opera companies, which have been competing across the great square
at Lincoln Centre for years, are smart enough to stay out of each other's way, mostly, in
the Boheme stakes. There are only three times this season when both houses have scheduled
La Boheme performances on the same day, and on two of those they've avoided going
head-to-head with alternating matinee and evening performances. Except, of course, on
April 10.
Both companies are running their Bohemes in repertory with other operas, whereas the
midtown Boheme is adhering to the standard Broadway week of eight performances (and three
casts), meaning that every Lincoln Centre performance is competition on one flank or the
other.
The Met hasn't rolled out its big, sensation-making Rodolfo and Mimi, husband-and-wife
team Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu. But it is not exactly fielding an untried pair,
either. In the early performances Rodolfo is being played by Mexican tenor Ramon Vargas,
who was a big hit in the role at Covent Garden last year, and the Met's Mimi is Elena
Kelessidi, who the London papers compared with Maria Callas - and not simply because she's
Greek.
"In some ways they're selling the Broadway Boheme on the false premise that in a true
opera house the casts are fat, they just stand there and sing and there's no magic,"
Giuliani said. "That used to happen, but those days are gone. Alagna and Gheorghiu
are electric together. And you don't have to avert your eyes when this cast takes the
stage: Elena Kelessidi is a seasoned soprano and a beautiful woman."
The economy-sized orchestra and cut-rate newcomers do give Luhrmann's production a price
advantage over its two rivals. The top price for seats to the Broadway La Boheme is a
hefty $US100 ($170), although sometimes it is available for half that at the same-day
ticket booth in Times Square. Those figures compare with a top price of $US280 a seat at
the Met and $US110 at City Opera, although both those companies have a wider range of
cheaper tickets than Broadway.
And what would Puccini say? Not a lot since the piece, sadly for his estate, is out of
copyright. A Broadway version probably wouldn't have shocked him even if he did prefer a
big orchestra in the pit (as enjoyed by Luhrmann's OA production). But La Boheme's New
York premiere was not in an opera house but a commercial theatre in 1898. It was dismissed
by the critics as "summer operatic flotsam and jetsam".
Now it's more like (northern) winter overkill, at least until May when the opera companies
go into summer hibernation. But for the moment in this town, Puccini is just like J-Lo and
Eminem: overexposed and overhyped. The difference is that he has no say in the matter.
--- Opera Australia's financial worries reported
yesterday might be lessened by the success of Baz Luhrmann's Boheme, which he created as
an Opera Australia production in 1990. OA will receive a royalty - believed to be about 1
per cent of box office - when the Broadway production goes into profit. OA chief executive
Adrian Collette said there are plans to tour a production of Boheme with Luhrmann's
company Bazmark Live.
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