Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardianĭanielle de Niese is a megawatt Musetta, embodying Jones’s slightly merciless idea of the character – sending up her wistful waltz to make her look drunk and desperate is the perhaps production’s only real misstep, even if we’re never in any doubt that she’ll get what she wants.
The voice of experience … Juan Diego Flórez (Rodolfo) with Ailyn Pérez (Mimi). His experience tells: if you really want to hear the heat-glow heft of a classic Puccini tenor then you could wait for other singers later in the run, but you miss a winning performance from Flórez, all elegant phrasing, rock-solid technique and boyish charm. It’s not often you get to see and hear a singer with a quarter century of stage experience come fresh to Rodolfo, Puccini’s least mature leading man, but after two decades as the international king of florid 19 th-century tenor roles Flórez is branching into heavier repertoire. Top of the billing in this revival, directed by Danielle Urbas, and leading the opening-night cast, is Juan Diego Flórez.
C hristmas has in some ways come early at the Royal Opera, where there is something of a Nutcracker vibe to Richard Jones’s production of Puccini’s tearjerker: falling snow, a festive chorus dressed as if for a Technicolor Dickens adaptation, and the prospect of Stewart Laing’s sets being wheeled back and forth for weeks to house several varyingly starry casts.
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