REVIEW

What: Pacific Opera Victoria: La bohème, by Giacomo Puccini, conducted by Timothy Vernon, directed by Michael Shamata

When: Feb. 22, 24, 26, and 28, 8 p.m.; pre-performance lectures at 6: 45 p.m.

Where: Royal Theatre (805 Broughton St.)

Tickets: $37 to $132. Call 250-386-6121; online at rmts.bc.ca; in person at the Royal and McPherson box office. Student rush tickets $15, available 45 minutes before each performance, subject to availability

This is Pacific Opera Victoria's fifth staging of Puccini's La bohème since 1980, but the company has managed to make this warhorse seem fresh and vital, with a production pleasing to both ear and eye.

Michael Shamata, the artistic director of the Belfry Theatre, makes his debut as an opera director here, and obviously has a knack for the genre. For one thing, he believes, to his credit, that his top priority is to stay out of the way of the music. Here, the more intense the music becomes, the less tempted Shamata is by needlessly busy or clever theatrics.

In the arias and duet in which Rodolfo and Mimì fall in love in Act 1, for instance, and in their duet in Act 3, Shamata keeps the stage picture simple, letting the voices and instruments do the heavy lifting dramatically; the result seems not dull or stiff but simply appropriate.

Shamata does sometimes get to exercise his chops more liberally, though -in light-hearted episodes among the men, in the death scene (handled with welcome restraint), and especially in Act 2, where he deftly manages a busy café scene populated by a large chorus (including children).

In this production, the action has been moved forward, plausibly, from around 1830 to the early 1930s, though Shamata and his set and costume designer, John Ferguson, impose no heavy-handed conceptual restraints. Ferguson makes impressive use of elements, including a revolving stage and projected photographs, and conveys a period flavour neatly. The abject poverty of the bohemians, emphasized repeatedly in the libretto, never quite registers visually, however.

Under the baton of POV's artistic director, Timothy Vernon, the Victoria Symphony supplies plenty of drama and passion from the pit; the music surges and shimmers and seduces as required, but is so elegantly moulded that it never comes across as shmaltzy or bombastic.

POV's cast includes fine performers in secondary roles; the baritone Doug MacNaughton, a POV regular, for instance, shows a keen comic sense in two small roles. The baritone Alexander Dobson and the young soprano Marianne Fiset are vocally and dramatically vivid as the feuding, temperamental, but ultimately decent lovers, the painter Marcello and the singer Musetta.

The doomed heroine Mimi, as performed by the soprano Rhoslyn Jones, a B.C. native in the early stages of a promising career, comes across as genuinely sweet, though there is nothing shy about Jones's powerful, robust voice, through which she invests her role with considerable dignity.

To play Rodolfo on opening night, on Thursday, the American tenor Gerard Powers was brought in from New York to replace Luc Robert, who, owing to illness, had to withdraw from the production before Tuesday's dress rehearsal. Powers was scheduled to perform again in yesterday's matinée; Robert is expected to resume his role on Tuesday.

One more thing: On just a few hours' notice, the local tenor Benjamin Butterfield stood in for Robert in the dress rehearsal, singing from the pit while Shamata mimed Rodolfo's role on stage. (POV's budget does not permit the luxury of understudies.) POV dress rehearsals are effectively performances, given before a large audience; moreover, Butterfield has never performed the role of Rodolfo, and his voice does not naturally embrace music like Puccini's. Yet he acquitted himself superbly, seemed in command of his music, hardly looked harassed by the pressure-cooker situation, indeed seemed to relish the test.

Too bad we have no Soviet-style state prizes with which to reward this act of decency and professionalism. If ever there was a Hero of Canadian Musical Labour .