Puccini - La Bohème / Baz Luhrmann, The Australian Opera
It might be possible to know thisLa Bohèmeand not love it, but  I have never met anyone who felt that way. "Oh yes," said a friend, "that's the  good one where everybody is the right age." The youth and freshness of the  singers are, in fact, major assets in this production. Youthful high spirits and  vulnerability are delicately portrayed, with sharp contrasts between the  Parisian bohemians' abject poverty and their carefree lifestyle. On DVD,La  Bohèmeis the work where the competition is strongest. Solid arguments can  be made for the staging of theMetropolitan Opera productionor the vocal quality of theSan Francisco production, but the Australian Opera offers the closest identification of  performers with the characters they represent. The effect is usually touching,  sometimes downright electrifying.For this production, the story is moved up to Paris in the 1950s. A veneer of  existentialism, a sense of the absurd, can be detected in the young men's  lifestyle, but the implicit message is that, even with electricity (e.g., a  massive neon sign celebrating "L'Amour"), bohemian life in the 1950s was  essentially unchanged from the 1830s. There are good performances throughout,  particularly by David Hobson (Rodolfo) and Cheryl Barker (Mimi), and the  direction of Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom,Moulin Rouge) is  outstanding.--Joe McLellan