Ever watched Boheme backwards?
OperaGo to Detroit Opera.
It’s in their season. ‘I liked the fact that I had to cry at the beginning and not at the end,’ said one audience member.
How do we go from tragedy to hope? From death to life? From loneliness to love? In this visionary treatment of Puccini’s opus La bohème, Detroit Opera does just that — by presenting the opera in reverse order. From finish to start, from death to the promise of new love, from loneliness and despair to the joy of friendships, wine, and song, this reversal presents the characters and arias we love in a refreshing, new vision of the story. Our favorite starving young artists and lovers survive to hope another day.
Presented in the Detroit Opera House in a co-production with Boston Lyric Opera and Spoleto Festival USA, this bold, unconventional take on Puccini’s opus is itself a bohemian work of art: experimental, nonconforming, original. This production is the first to stage La bohème in reverse, marking an impressive creative milestone for Detroit Opera as part of our vision for The Next 50.
Is this what happens when Wagnerians run American regional opera companies?
So in reverse to what Puccini wanted, correct?
I wonder how the tenor feels, having to sing “Che gelida manina” at the end of the evening. . . .
So Mimi reconciles with Rodolfo and dies before she decides to break up with him in order to look after her emotional and physical well-being?
Sure, that makes sense. Will we next see Don Jose stab Carmen before he helps her escape from prison? See Madama Butterfly stab herself before she marries Pinkerton? See Don Giovanni go to Hell before he stabs the Commendatore? See Calaf elope with Turandot before he answers the three riddles?
Is this really the new normal for opera?
I recommend standing on your head while watching this.
I’ll go see it if, at the end, I can take my ticket to the box office and exchange it for the admission price. 🙂
Do they play the music backwards then?
I look forward to other operas in reverse: Wagner’s Ring – finally some joy at the conclusion; Strauss’ Salome with Jochanaan’s head restored; and Tosca mysteriously recovering from her fatal leap. But other works may be more problematic: Isolde getting wound-up about her prospects and angry at a revived Tristan; Golaud and Melisande being lost in the woods (but at least she recovered); and Figaro damned to measure his bedroom in spite of the count’s retrackting.
The Emperor’s New Clothes.
Yes, but who is brave enough to be the little boy?
LOL. Whatever. I guess the take-away is that you can’t destroy La bohème no matter how hard you try.
Reminds me of Billy Pilgrim – in Vonnegut’s masterpiece, “Slaughterhouse 5” – watching the war movie backwards to flip the gruesomeness of man’s inhumanity to man on its head. The bomb doors on the planes suck up the fire from the cities below into metal cylinders, which are transported back to the factories, where, touchingly, it is the women who dismantled them. Vonnegut’s point, of course, having witnessed the fire bombing of Dresden himself, was that life is so cruel that only the denial of time itself can negate its inevitable march towards catastrophe of one sort or another. But are we now living in times in which we want to protect ourselves from the poetic pathos of life’s inevitable cycles? Have we become too afraid of death to even dare to face the oxymoronic beauty of loss, as captured by Puccini’s four act chronology? What next? La Traviata is re-written to coincide with the discovery of penicillin?
If only George Floyd had seen this. . .
or simply run it as a flashback. Can do that with many operas. No need to present this in all these high falutin art terms that makes things sound so grand/important but utterly meaningless.
Are these people sane?
I don’t think so.
Puccini would be relieved to know that Yuval Sharon has finally sorted out the mess he left his opera in. What next – Meistersinger backwards, getting the longest Act over first?
I always suspected that the Merkins didn’t know the front of an opera from the back.
I would have preferred to use my top C earlier in the evening.
Sknaht, ssap ll’I
How disappointing that they’re not playing the score backwards. 😉
I was there for opening night and can say that it was pretty well done. Keep in mind that this was the end of a season arc that had the company return to their opera house after a long absence and a rebranding (Detroit Opera instead of Michigan Opera Theatre). But hopefully new artistic directors Yuval Sharon and Christine Goerke will leave the classics mostly alone going forward.
“Emehob Al”: when played backwards you can faintly hear the words “opera is dead.”
Why didn’t Puccini think of this?
We aren’t on the same level as this visionary! Ha ha!
I am not sure what is more vomit-inducing, the mangling of my beloved opera or the gushing response of the patrons, falling over themselves with delight that they do not have to feel sad at the end of a musical evening. An after theatre dinner and drink can fix that. Nothing new here. The awful Le Nozze di Figaro from Hannover started with the finale and then went back to the right order if not the right story and spirit of Mozart’s masterpiece. The Detroit opera just took it one step further. Such complicated expression of absurdity.
And, by the way, there is hope at the end of La Boheme. Mimi dies, but like Alfredo in la Traviata , Rodolfo survives and he will live and love again. Musetta and Marcello will probably get back together. And Alfredo will meet the young woman and love her and tell her about Violetta. These were unions ” till death us do part” even if they were not approved and blessed by the church or society, and life will go on.
There is absolutely no need for these innovations, it adds nothing and replaces a perfectly logical story, written by a great poet, with a confusing mess. But, thank you ever so much for not replacing the text with rap.
“Anna Karenina” could be improved by just changing a couple of words: Instead of stepping “in front of” that train, she steps “onto” it.
Cumsing yonger yower macatower
So pinching a trick from Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” (and the play from which it was adapted), Pinter’s “Betrayal” etc? Not that I object to the experiment, but it’s not exactly a new idea.
It was gimmicky. I was there.