Review: Fort Worth Opera presents a hybrid staging of ‘La bohème’

FORT WORTH — Fort Worth Opera has had its challenges: dismissal of an innovative general director, short tenures of two others ill-suited to the job, deaths of core funders, COVID-19. The last in a series of imaginative spring festivals was in 2019, before the pandemic shut down all performances.

Now led by general and artistic director Angela Turner Wilson, an experienced opera singer with extensive area connections, the company is attempting a rebirth. On Friday night, in its first Bass Performance Hall appearance since a 2022 La traviata, the company presented that other tearjerker about a tubercular soprano, La bohème. With no sets and only minimal props, costumed singers dramatically interacted downstage while Miguel Harth-Bedoya conducted members of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra upstage.

Kathleen Trott’s costumes, from Arizona Opera, effectively set the Parisian story in the 1890s, when Puccini composed his beloved hit. Jamie Milligan supplied effective lighting, with the orchestra playing from stand lights in a subtle blue wash. Chuck Hudson did the staging, although David Paul was listed as original stage director. Ra Byn Taylor was listed as sound designer, apparently for recording purposes. In welcoming comments, Wilson assured us the many microphones were not for in-house amplification.

It was good to have Fort Worth Opera back in the grand opera business, in the hall designed for it. But both dramatically and vocally, Friday’s performance lacked subtleties that could have made this hybrid presentation much more effective.

The best singing came in secondary roles: Michael Colman’s well-focused baritone for Schaunard, Daniel Scofield’s denser tone and sometimes blustery delivery for Marcello. Kofi Hayford’s substantive basso was initially impressive for Colline, but it loosened in the last act. I heard no poetry in his farewell to his old coat.

Cast members gathered around a table to sing in an April 3 dress rehearsal of the... — Cast members gathered around a table to sing in an April 3 dress rehearsal of the semi-staged Fort Worth Opera production of Puccini's "La bohème." They included (standing, left to right) Michael Colman (Schaunard), Daniel Scofield (Marcello) and Alok Kumar (Rodolfo), along with (seated, left to right) Kofi Hayford (Colline) and Kevin Glavin (Benoit).(Freddie Watkins)

Meigui Zhang didn’t convince me as Musetta until her tender side surfaced in the last act. Her “Quando me’n vo” dragged, and her fine soprano was sometimes pressed into brassiness when subtler singing would have better characterized Musetta’s seductiveness. Kevin Glavin was the deliciously dotty but richly sonorous landlord Benoit and sugar daddy Alcindoro.

Alok Kumar gave Rodolfo a powerful Italianate tenor, and if you’re impressed by sheer vocal decibels, you’ll be impressed. But quadruple forte was too often his default position when more of the character’s tenderness and vulnerability were needed.

Elizabeth Caballero often captured Mimì's fragility, maybe an argument for her rapid-flutter vibrato. But she sometimes flailed about too much for a dying consumptive, and even in intimate moments she sometimes joined the “anything you can sing, I can sing louder” competition.

Orchestras onstage for operatic performances often challenge singers to keep up sonically. But with the FWSO far upstage, with no reflective surfaces above or at the sides, Puccini’s wonderful orchestral writing sounded dull and distant. (This needn’t have been so.) Connecting with the downstage singers via video monitors, Harth-Bedoya seemed in good control of a tricky situation, and, insofar as one could judge, the orchestra played well.

Prepared by Julian Reed, the chorus was superb at the beginning, although ensemble slipped in a couple of later moments. The toy seller Parpignol was announced but appeared with no toys, so there was no children’s chorus.