Old opera, brand new production

RNZ News

04-06-2025

This audio is not downloadable due to copyright restrictions.
Director Bruno Ravella
Photo:
Andi Crown Photography
Bruno Ravella is one step ahead of the rest of the team.
While NZ Opera is still performing its latest production of
Puccini's masterpiece
La bohème
in Auckland, Ravella is already directing the chorus in rehearsals for the Wellington shows.
And by the time the rest of the cast catch up, he'll be in the South Island with the Christchurch chorus.
While the opera itself is well over a hundred years old, NZ Opera is presenting a brand new staging devised by Ravella.
The original was set in mid-19th century Paris, but Ravella has updated it to the same city in 1947 - a time of recovery after the trauma of the Second World War.
Ravella joined RNZ Concert's Bryan Crump ahead of a rehearsal with the Wellington chorus to discuss how he approaches opera, how he directs, and why
La bohème
works as an opera despite not really being about anything much at all.
Boy meets girl, they fall in love, she gets sick and dies.
Ravella says the simplicity is the opera's secret. No labyrinthian plot twists, no kings or queens, just two ordinary folk and lots of ordinary human emotion, beautifully expressed through Puccini's music.