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There are two big stars in Opera Holland Park's new production of La Bohème. Katie Bird's Mimi rides Puccini's great melodic rollers with ease and a luminous clarity, while the City of London Sinfonia, conducted by George Jackson, play quite wonderfully a score that was intended for a somewhat larger orchestra. Notwithstanding the great swell of Puccini's score, Bohème is, at heart, though, an intense and intimate opera. Its most touching moments – the first meeting of Mimi and Rodolfo in an icy garret, Mimi's heartbroken conversation with Marcello about Rodolfo�...

Puccini’s masterpiece La bohème combines friendship, passion and tragedy to create one of the world’s most popular operas. Having been staged so many times, there is an understandable temptation to alter the setting, but does it work or is it change for change's sake?

Although musically very strong and with Katie Bird a lovely Mimi, Natascha Metherell’s relocation of Puccini’s bohemians to a 1950s film studio brings as many distractions as it does insights

Natascha Metherell’s new staging for Opera Holland Park transfers Puccini’s opera to a 1950s Italian film studio, where a pompous movie director (who turns out to be Musetta’s sugar daddy) is making a film that’s set — you guessed it — in the Latin quarter of Paris featured in La bohème.