Photo Credit: Mark Frohna
Just a few bars of Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, quite probably the world’s most popular opera, can give you a rush. The music finds its way into your cells. When Michael Pink decided to bring the young artists of Puccini’s story to life through ballet theater, he asked his music director Andrews Sill to create a singer-free version of the score, the unforgettable melodies rendered by instruments. He fashioned a ballet for his dancers, most importantly Luz San Miguel (Mimi), Davit Hovhannisyan (Rodolfo), Annia Hidalgo (Musetta) and Timothy O’Donnell (Marcello).
With Rick Graham’s sets, David Grill’s lighting, Paul Daigel’s costumes and Sill conducting, Pink’s La Bohème entered history in 2012 as one of Milwaukee Ballet’s finest achievements. It’s back for a second run with the original cast of principals intact and an intriguing second cast led by Nicole Teague, Patrick Howell, Marize Fumero and Isaac Sharratt.
Pink pushed Puccini’s fin de siècle story forward to the Paris of the 1950s: “A time in Europe,” he explained, “when people were reeling from the effects of the war, austerity and poverty. You were grateful for the smallest of the small. The idea of having everything you wanted—a white picket fence, two cars, three and half kids, whatever the dream was—nothing was further from peoples’ minds. What mattered was the fact that you were alive, you were free and the world hadn’t fallen into the hands of a ruthless dictator. And of course history is brilliant at repeating itself, showing how, through oppression and propaganda, a maniac like Hitler could get as far as he did with people saying ‘It’s fine, it’s fine.’
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“Our dancers are the same age as the people in the story,” he continued. “They’re today’s young bohemians in Milwaukee. It’s a story about people falling in love and out of love, and in love and out of love; can’t be together, can’t be without each other; apart for weeks, months, then back together, all right, carry on. Their lives aren’t governed by possessing much. They don’t have materialistic wants. That’s so far from what they care about. But they’ve got integrity and a degree of honesty that will see them through life.”
Patrick Howell was dancing in Germany, about to create the dramatic title role in the world premiere of Pink’s Dorian Gray for Ballet Ausgburg, while La Bohème premiered in Milwaukee. Pink arrived in Germany with a video of the show. “I think he was still on a high from it,” Howell said. “We watched it together in his hotel room. I just fell in love with it. I think it’s some of his best work to date in terms of the pas de deux (duets), the relationships, the camaraderie and the love story.” Howell will play the poet Rodolfo, in love with the dying seamstress Mimi, played by his real-life wife, Nicole Teague. It’s the first time they’ve been paired in such dramatic roles. “We’re figuring each other out in rehearsal,” he said. “The looks she gives me say everything.”
As much acting as dancing technique is required. “It can be really frustrating because you start off just wanting to get the steps,” Howell explained. “But you also have to start thinking right away about what’s going on. Each time you rehearse, you learn more and you start to play off one another. You can’t just go, well, I’m thinking this.”
Pink talked about this: “When you work with a group of people over several years, you grow to understand each other and your confidence grows to make good acting choices; to know that you’re allowed to do that, that we’re looking for you to invest your creativity in everything you do on stage; and in Bohème in particular because it’s so emotionally charged. There are moments of complete stillness in which you can feel the palpable tension between Rodolfo and Mimi as she becomes weaker and weaker and he feels more helpless and hopeless. You need people who have great confidence to do that on stage. There’s always a level of honesty in our studio that comes from trust and from knowing that everybody around you is being nurtured by what you’re doing.”
He’s changed some steps and developed some scenes, he said, but “What’s different this time is that I get to be a real director. I’ve got the script. I’ve looked at all of the logic. The show has arrived. There’s a reason Bohème is one of the most popular operas. It works. It reminds you of the power of theater and why it will survive everything and anybody. We need people to be engaged right now and theater can do that.”
Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 2-4 and 1:30 p.m. Nov. 5 at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, 929 N. Water St. For tickets call 414-902-2103 or visit milwaukeeballet.org.
