LIVE OPERA GETS REEL
La Bohème heads to cinemas
Mimis come and Rodolfos go, but one thing never changes in La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera: When the curtain goes up on Act 2, the audience always applauds.
Act 1 of Puccini’s opera is set in a garret amid the rooftops of Paris where four young bohemians live in poverty.
When it’s over, the curtain descends and the audience members stay in their seats.
A mere five minutes or so later, thanks to the ingenious stagecraft of Franco Zeffirelli, the curtain rises again on a two-tiered street scene crowded with a café, vendor carts, stone staircase and house fronts, and teeming with 195 choristers and children celebrating Christmas Eve.
“The audience always gives the stage crew a hand,” said Stephen A. Diaz, the Met’s master carpenter. “It’s one of the few shows where they do that.”
There’s a secret to the rapid scene change that the audience never guesses. The second-act set is put together onstage long before the opera begins.
“We do it backward — Act 2 first, then Act 1,” said Diaz, who was overseeing backstage work before a performance last week, as about 50 carpenters, electricians and painters buzzed about the set.
The reverse order is necessary, Diaz said, so lighting cues for the street scene can be tested ahead of time.
“They need 12 minutes of focus so it can just come out and be ready to go,” he said.
About 15 minutes before show time, Act 2 disappears.
The front of the café slides off to stage right on a rolling platform, the houses are pushed back and a grey gauze scrim representing the sky comes down to hide the rear half of the set.
Then the garret arrives on another wagon from stage left and the music begins.
La Boheme, starring Sonya Yoncheva as Mimi and Michael Fabiano as Rodolfo and conducted by Marco Armiliato, will be shown in select theatres Saturday. A list of theatres can be found at the Met’s website: metopera.org/hd