Classical and Jazz: La Boheme is at Hackney Empire
La Boheme is at Hackney Empire
Published: 17 May, 2012
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR
PUCCINI'S ever-popular opera La Bohème is relocated from the garrets of 19th-century Paris to the townships of modern-day South Africa, its lavish orchestration stripped down to an assortment of percussion instruments to spectacular effect.
The Cape Town-based Isango Ensemble, who worked similar wonders with The Magic Flute a couple of years back, are led in this production at the Hackney Empire by the powerful vocals of Pauline Malefane as Mimi and Mhlekazi “Whawha” Mosiea as Rudolpho, here renamed Lungelo, whose tale of doomed love form the centrepiece of the plot.
This is also a story of poverty, of people at the bottom of the heap trying to make ends meet, keep warm and stave off hunger as the landlord demands the rent.
Mimi’s worrying cough turns out to be tuberculosis, as much as a killer today in post-apartheid South Africa as it was among the poor of newly industrialised Europe 200 years ago.
As hard up as they are, the couple’s friends sell anything they have to hand to pay for a doctor, but it turns out to be too late and Mimi famously dies in her lover’s arms.
But amid the hardship there is a zest for life and hope that a better day must come.
The action opens on Youth Day, a public holiday in South Africa to commemorate the 1976 Soweto uprising.
As the names of the heroes are evoked by the wonderfully soaring voices of the ensemble, the opera slips seamlessly into township jive then back again.
The production’s masterstroke has to be the marimba and steel pan orchestration, conducted by Mandisi Dyantyis, a seemingly simple sound that nevertheless enhances the emotional power of the performance.
The downside was the stage lighting, which seemed to have only two settings, dim or very dim, even during La Bohème’s happier moments.
• Isango Ensemble’s La Boheme is at Hackney Empire, 291 Mare Street, Hackney, E8 1EJ, tonight (May 17) 7.30pm; May 19 7pm; May 22 and 25 7.30pm; May 27 5pm; May 29, 31 and June 1 7.30pm. Tickets £10-£34 (conc £2 off), 020 8985 2424, www.hackneyempire.co.uk