Alessandra Volpe (Carmen), Alain Coulombe (Zuniga). Photo by: Opera Lyra/Sam Garcia

Opera is getting more and more popular in Ottawa. The tickets for the latest Opera Lyra production, Bizet’s Carmen, are selling like hot cakes. I even saw a few women wearing a flower in their hair as an homage to the famous title character. This is well-deserved support, given the organization’s brilliant previous season, which gave rise to the operatic art in Ottawa. Opera Lyra is definitely heading in the right direction. Of course, as the old saying, per aspera ad astra, points out, the road to success is always paved with pitfalls.  Unfortunately “Carmen” proved to be that stumbling block on the road for Opera Lyra. Carmen is one of the most popular operas ever; the one sung and listened to by generations of opera lovers and non-lovers alike. Its attraction lies in its musicality, energy, and the nature of the main character – Carmen.

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Well-known and admired by young and old, the fairy tale of Cinderella came alive once more on the stage in a production by Ottawa’s Opera Lyra, this time in an abridged and somewhat altered version, to fit a 40 minute show for the younger generation. In this production, the story revolves around a poor and overworked young girl who is despised and greatly abused by her two stepsisters. While working hard all day long, worn-out and shabby, Cinderella never gives up hope of a better life. She sings a beautiful song about a love between a king and a common girl, little knowing that the dream from the song, however improbable, will come true for her. Despite her ragged attire, it is obvious that Cinderella is beautiful, mostly due to the fact that most of her beauty comes from the inside.

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Mimi, Rodolfo and Musetta (seated) Photo: Barbara Gray.

As the curtain draws open, there is the painter Marcello, perched on a landing on one side of the stage, struggling almost violently with a huge canvass, as the lights of Paris sparkle through the glass roof of the freezing garret where the drama is about to unfold. . The first notes of Puccini’s music strike a highly dramatic tone and we are immediately swept away by what quickly becomes a most visually exciting and musically sumptuous production of La Bohème. The orchestra literally pushed the passion to its height as the singers, also true actors, exhibited body language that was  just as expressive as their voices. Heightened emotions, starving artists, soaring passion, lovers’ quarrels, wild life in the Latin Quarter (as seen through the eyes of the librettists of course) and a tragic ending. So goes one of the world’s most popular Nineteenth century soap operas set to an unforgettable score that somehow did not convince the critics when it opened in 1896. However, tastes have changed and stage aesthetics are now much more open to multiple influences and that is what we see here.

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Photo: Barbara Gray. Laura Whelan (Musetta standing), Joyce El-Khoury (Mimi) and Michael Fabiano (Rodolfo)

Saturday, September 8, 2012 was an exciting night in opera at the National Arts Center and will be remembered as the start of a new artistic direction for Opera Lyra. Judging by the audience’s reactions, I would say it’s definitely going down the right path. On the opening night of La Boheme, Southam Hall, full almost to the last seat, lived, breathed, laughed and cried with the heroes on the stage. As hard as it is to achieve this kind of connection between the cast and audience, it is as magical when it happens. And surely, magic happened on Saturday night.

Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème is loosely based on “Scènes de la vie de bohème,” a series of stories by Henri Murger. It was first performed in Turin on February 1, 1896 at the Teatro Regioand under the baton of the young Arturo Toscanini. The story depicts the life of four artists in Paris’s Latin Quarter in 1830. They share a shabby, cold apartment and are often without fuel to warm them during the winter and have very little to eat or drink. Despite this, they live a merry life filled with poetry, song, dance, philosophy and paintings. It is when these poverty-stricken but carefree moments are infiltrated by powerful love that the troubles began. Burdened by deprived life conditions, lovers part, only to be brought back together at the bitter end when Mimi is dying of tuberculosis.

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