LA BOHEME'S BOHEMIANS
"La Boheme" fever has, indeed, reached New Jersey, courtesy of the popular Trenton company, Boheme Opera New Jersey. James Marvel will be holding the dramatic reins on the perennial favorite that will be presented for two performances at the Patriots Theater at the Trenton War Memorial.
Marvel, who made his debut with the Boheme Opera in 2001 with "La Traviata," is returning to stage "La Boheme," the famed opera that serves as the 15-year-old company's namesake. During our phone conversation, I asked Marvel, in light of all the updating and revisionist productions currently around, if staging a more reverential "Boheme" offered a special challenge.
"Because I am a trained actor, as well as a director, the challenge is making sure the acting is as good as the singing," he says.
Marvel received favorable reviews for his production of "Boheme" last November at Opera Santa Barbara. Despite certain constants, Marvel must take into consideration working with a different cast and under different conditions.
"It is the utter simplicity of the story and characters with whome we can easily relate that make this opera work," says Marvel. "There is not one wasted note of music or piece of text. Everything that happens in this opera is essential.
"Almost everybody has a period in their life, usually 20-something, when there was very little money and we lived on very little food. As adults we like to look back and remember it as the time when we were rougish and living life to the fullest."
With Marvel preparing for what is essentially a traditional staging, I wondered what he thought of the sudden burst of director-driven approaches to "La Boheme." "There is a place for it," he says, citing the one at the City Opera, under the direction of James Robinson, in which the action takes place in the early years of World War I. "It's extremely intelligent. For me as long as the director is in service to the score and to the spirit of the show, I have no problem with it."
One can draw conclusions from Marvel's comment that "some directors make it all about themselves. I always say that you have four options: the story of the music, the text, and the subtext. But the fourth, the most dangerous, is the auteur theory in which the opera becomes their story. As a result, I change my direction style from show to show."
Marvel talks about how it is possible to invigorate operas with new energy and life in a classical setting. In his production of "Boheme," he says that the relationship between the four guys (he referes to Rodolfo, Marcello, and their boisterous friends Colline, a philosopher, and Schaunard, a musician) is really geared to them having fun. He tells me to think of the dorm rooms at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
Expressing his feeling about the musical side of this production, Marvel says, "After the first rehearsal I knew that Pucciatti's musical direction fits perfectly with my dramatic intentions. There are always a lot of things in the score that are open to interpretation, notably the tempo. That is why there are so many recordings of the same opera. If you are working with a conductor whose musical interpretation is vastly different from your dramatic vision, it can be a problem. I see no such problem."
It isn't surprising to learn that Marvel, who received his B.A. in world literature from Sarah Lawrence and Oxford University, and holds and M.F.A. from the International Actor Training Academy at teh University of Tennessee, intends to concentrate on the acting. There aren't many opera directors around who can boast that they worked as an actor and director in Edinburgh, Scotland; England; Poland; Slovakia; Hungary; and the Czech Republic and has had many of his critical writings published in a variety of international literary journals. "I even had some dance training at Sarah Lawrence," says Marvel, about the college that served as a distinct contrast to the all-boy Catholic school he attended as a youth growing up in New Orleans.
Marvel says he gets the respect from singers who, contrary to popular opinion, he says, are "only difficult to work with when up against incompetence."
"If a singer doesn't like a particular kind of blocking, I ask what doesn't work for you and what do you suggest. I show respect for them by weighing the alternatives."
He inherited the theater bug from his father, an actor, who now teaches communication in Tulane's business school and his mother, a pianist, and a fourth generation Princetonian.
By Simon Saltzman
U.S. 1
April 23, 2003