Yesterday my wife and I enjoyed the dress rehearsal of Puccini’s La Bohème at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in the University of Maryland College Park campus. The Center is home to the Theater Department and the School of Music, where our daughter Emily studies violin performance. Emily is in the La Boheme’s orchestra and that’s the reason we went to see the dress rehearsal. The opera’s cast, orchestra, and crew are all students, but the performance was absolutely professional.
Thanks to Emily, we were well prepared to enjoy the opera. Perhaps sensing our ignorance of operas, Emily played a DVD of La Bohème several times at home. I already knew the story, so during the performance, I did not need to look at the English subtitles much. I could follow the story even as they performed in Italian. I could even imagine that I understood Italian—okay, just a word or two here and there like Buona Sera for Good Night :-) The cozy atmosphere of the Kay Theater, the great set design and stage lighting, the various styles of opera singing with gusto, and the perfect orchestral accompaniment, all worked their magic to seduce us into the world of Mimi, Rodolfo, Musetta, Marcello, and their friends in nineteenth century Paris.
I was surprised how quickly the time passed by and I think that’s another good way to judge how enjoyable the opera performance was, “time files when you are having fun”, right? Well, we certainly had fun. The opera opens Saturday April 16 and plays four performances through Sunday April 24, 2005 (tickets are $20; $7 for students) I think the audience is in for a treat!
Read the Washington Post's April 18, 2005 review of the performance: Opera Studio's 'Boheme': Almost as Good as It Gets
Comments