Cafe 'Bohème' is just boffo
By Dorothy Andries
Evanston Review Classical Music Critic

Their landlord never gets his rent. Musetta's sugar daddy gets stuck with the bill. These young Bohemians live on the edge, literally, on the Left Bank in Paris during the 1830s and figuratively, as they struggle for fuel and food.

Their love life is as tumultuous as their finances and that's the appeal of "La Bohème." The production presented Sunday by Opera Theatre North at the Highland Park Community House of Giacomo Puccini's beloved opera is as full of anguish and beauty, passion and pain as any presentation anywhere.

The beautiful score, played by a string quartet with an assist from the company's music director Francesco Milioto, conducting from the piano, retains its power to move us. To add to the fun, the audience is seated at round tables, as if they were actually inside Cafe Momus.

And such beautiful Bohemians! The young couples are actually young, their voices not yet dimmed by time. They have been cast as carefully as the characters in a Merchant-Ivory film.

Mimi, sung by soprano Veronica Mitina, a native of St. Petersburg, Russia, is as winsome as the young Audrey Hepburn. She has a gleaming voice with a silvery top and captured our hearts -- and Rudolfo's -- from her first moments on stage.

Rudolfo is sung by tenor Lawrence Johnson, whose powerful voice and strong presence were a fine foil for Mimi's fragility. His roommate, the starving painter Marcello, is sung by Texas baritone Michael Mayes, whose movie-star good looks, acting ability and fine voice make him a standout.

Musetta, of course, is Marcello's foil. She is portrayed with full force and fire by Rebecca Davis. During her show-stopping aria in the second act, she took advantage of this show's cabaret-style seating and wandered from table to table, seductively flipping her red feather boa.

The other Bohemians, Kenneth Mattice as Schaunard and Todd von Felker as Colline, were sung with alternating humor and pathos. And bass-baritone Andrew Schultz gave an appropriately comic portrayal to the hapless landlord and the befuddled sugar daddy.

In one ingenious touch, stage director Andrew Eggert had the Bohemians exit the cafe in a conga line down the narrow center aisle at the end of the second act. Just the thing those crazy kids might have done!

This vibrant production will be performed again at 8 p.m. Saturday. Call (847) 433-6430. Don't miss it. When will you ever get to Cafe Momus again?