Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes with two intermissions
Premiered on 4 December 2015
Recommended for 12+
“The clicking of heels on the pavement, the ringing of a tramway, the bubbling of voices – this performance begins with street sounds. And the sets show the ordinary midday life of a city. The city is Paris, the city of romantics and lovers, the dream city. The city where you want most of all to freeze time”.
“The director skillfully draws our attention to every micro scene; we fix our eyes on it and the rest does not exist for us anymore. It seems like we do editing in our mind, cutting and slicing the film without being aware that our interest is controlled by Isaakyan. You can say whatever you want, but it is done in a masterly fashion!”
“The undoubtedly beautiful, airy set design by Hartmut Schörghofer and the spectacular lighting design by Sergey Skornetsky are the advantages of the production”.
“The singing reveals the main concept of the opera, in which, as the poet said, the love boat was wrecked by daily life, but people’s feelings are alive, provoking nostalgia for sincerity and scratching the soul. The singers did what the director wanted. They sang a story of “love that cannot be caught and of life that cannot be stopped”.
“The set design by the famous Austrian artist Hartmut Schörghofer is expressive and ingenious. It works for the idea and spirit of the music and becomes a part of the coherent artistic image – this is what makes the artist’s work different from the designer’s”.
“And here we see marvelous choir and crowd scenes, with a Christmas parade, Santa Claus flying with balloons, and street musicians dressed like Napoleonic soldiers.
The action is moved from Balzac’s Paris to the postwar Europe of the 1940s, with its electric atmosphere of life, which recently lived through a total shock. That’s why the melodrama has such anguish in it, and Mimi and Rodolfo’s, Marcello and Musetta’s love is so full of passion and emotional tension. ”
The La Boheme production, premiered in December of 2015, will be shown at Irish Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. The Novaya Opera’s tour will take place from November 30 to December 4, 2016. The Irish soprano Celine Byrne will perform the part of Mimi in three performances.
The Kolobov Novaya Opera Theatre 3/2 Karetny Ryad (Hermitage Garden), Moscow, 127006, Russia
