Brazen ‘Boheme’

If George Bernard Shaw was right that youth is wasted on the young, does it follow that “La Boheme” must be as well? Opera, after all, is one of the greatest devices ever invented for sublimating a slew of youthful excesses -- lust, narcissism, tortuous self-doubt, a flair for the melodramatic -- into one gloriously over-the-top art form.

And Puccini’s “La Boheme,” of course, is the ultimate operatic tribute to flaming youth and its discontents. The tragic saga of the doomed love affair between the impoverished poet Rodolfo and the consumptive seamstress Mimi has become the prototype of the modern live-fast, die-young, leave-a-beautiful-corpse aesthetic. In some measure, you can thank (or blame) “La Boheme” for everything from “West Side Story” to “Rent” (Jonathan Larson’s Lower Manhattan “La Boheme” knockoff) to whatever pouty MTV video your teenager is watching even as you read this.

Fortunately, Australian film director Baz Luhrmann isn’t willing to kiss off “La Boheme” as a comfortably middle-aged repertory classic and leave it at that. In his swooning Broadway-hybrid production, which opened Sunday at the Ahmanson Theatre, Luhrmann insists on treating “La Boheme” as a plausible piece of artifice, a story about twentysomethings who are suffering real emotional conflicts but aren’t yet wise enough to grasp life’s truly precious things.

In taking youthful angst seriously and casting his production with young performers, Luhrmann concocts a “Boheme” that’s moodier and funnier, darker and finally more moving than any in my experience. It is respectably, if not brilliantly, sung, and it is much better acted than the standard regional opera company production.

Transported from the restless, revolutionary Paris of the 1830s to the restless, postwar, jazz-obsessed Paris of 1957, this “Boheme” has an insolent, erotic edge to it. We’re only a year or two away from Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” with its iconoclastic, romanticized vision of French youth modeling itself on American pop culture and the slouchy Method-acting tics of Young Hollywood. It’s no accident that a poster of Brando’s “The Wild One” (“Le Gang Descend Sur La Ville”) adorns the rooftop garret Rodolfo (David Miller) shares with his best friend and fellow starving artist, the painter Marcello (Ben Davis).

Luhrmann and his design team don’t skimp on “Boheme’s” voluptuous visual and choreographic possibilities. We expect a certain pictorial extravagance from the director of “Moulin Rouge,” “Strictly Ballroom” and “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet.” In reimagining “La Boheme,” Luhrmann and company fill Puccini’s vessel to the brim without shattering it.

Catherine Martin, the show’s scenic and co-costume designer, as well as Luhrmann’s wife, has outfitted the production in striking monochrome shades, beautifully lighted by Nigel Levings and accented here and there with spot color, usually red. It’s an apt metaphor for a society still struggling to break out of its wartime deprivations, and it complements the stark-but-sensual tone implicit in Luhrmann’s Gauloise-laced atmosphere.

The big Act 2 set piece at the Cafe Momus is a visual tour de force, with clever forced-perspective architecture framing leather-clad hipsters, hookers, a quartet of jazz cats, kids on scooters and a perambulating dwarf. We half expect the kissing lovers in Robert Doisneau’s famous photograph to come strolling across the stage at any minute.

Emphasizing rather than hiding its theatrical sleights of hand, the show keeps its stage crew visible during most of the action, moving sets on and off and holding the “footlights.”

I’ve heard better “Bohemes” than Luhrmann’s, but I seriously doubt that I’ll ever see a better one. Virtual technology, for better or worse, has raised our expectations of how opera should look; the proverbial fat lady is giving way to the rad body. Here, the cast members are as handsomely constructed as the sets. And why shouldn’t opera singers look like Bruce Weber models, as long as they can really sing?

This crew can. The production has been multiple-cast to keep the young performers from tearing their vocal cords to shreds. At Sunday’s opening, Miller (a holdover from the Broadway version) was a virile, earnest Rodolfo -- tenor-smooth, with just enough stubble around the edges. Davis was a raffishly charismatic sidekick, and Kelly Kaduce was a sweetly unaffected Mimi. In the bravura role of Musetta, the unrepentant Bad Girl to Mimi’s Good Girl, Chloe Wright cut a sultry but sympathetic figure and did a scorching version of Musetta’s vampy cantilena, “Quando me’n vo.” Daniel Okultich and Daniel C. Webb also impressed as Rodolfo’s partners in stylish penury.

The conversational nature of the libretto lends itself to the more naturalistic acting style favored here. And though some critics have found the miked performers and the midsize pit ensemble, guided by music director and conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos, too thin to support an operatic score, Puccini’s melodies sounded swell from my admittedly cushy orchestra seat. Anyone in the balconies care to comment?

While Luhrmann keeps his eye firmly on “Boheme’s” emotional payoffs, not a single moment of comic potential escapes his notice. Something as small as the lighting of a cigar becomes an amusing character insight, and the bohemians’ antics in cheating their landlord out of the rent in Act 1 evoke the Jets of “West Side Story” taking the mickey out of Officer Krupke -- as Luhrmann further eviscerates the line between the popular musical and orotund High Art. Even the English supertitles, projected on screens above and to the side of the stage, are witty.

But Broadway and the Ahmanson are one thing. Will La Scala and Glyndebourne patrons accept an operatic culture where “Ka-pow!” “Wham!” and “Thwack!” are interpolated into their black tie-and-wicker hamper rituals? In the end, Luhrmann’s “La Boheme,” which was first staged at the Australian Opera in 1990, doesn’t represent an assault on operatic conventions but a heartfelt desire to reconnect with the medium’s expressive essence.

“What are you rebelling against?” a character asks Brando’s motorcycle gang leader in “The Wild One.” “What have you got?” was Brando’s famous reply. With this “La Boheme,” Luhrmann is rebelling against the idea of opera as an either/or proposition -- visually spectacular or aurally sublime, cinematically fluid or proudly theatrical, letter-faithful or inventively fashionable -- but rarely both. Now, there’s an artistic cause worth fighting for.

*

‘La Boheme’

Where: Ahmanson Theatre, Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles

When: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m.; Feb. 19, 26 and March 4, 2 and 8 p.m.

Ends: March 7

Price: $30 to $120

Contact: (213) 628-2772

Running Time: 2 hours, 10 minutes

Ben Davis,

Eugene Brancoveanu...Marcello

David Miller, Alfred Boe, Adrian Dwyer, Victor Robertson...Rodolfo

Daniel C. Webb...Colline

Daniel Okulitch...Schaunard

Tim Jerome...Benoit and Alcindoro

Kelly Kaduce, Janinah Burnett,

Wei Huang, Anya Matanovic...Mimi

Dan Entriken...Parpignol

Chloe Wright,

Jessica Comeau...Musetta

Sean Cooper...Customs Officer

Jean-Pascal Heynemand...Sergeant

Music by Giacomo Puccini. Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. Directed by Baz Luhrmann. Production design Catherine Martin. Music director & principal conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos. Costumes Catherine Martin and Angus Strathie. Lights Nigel Levings. Sound Acme Sound Partners. Production stage manager Kelly A. Martindale.