Opera review: Scottish Opera - La bohème

It’s a breathless affair, Renaud Doucet and André Barbe’s helter-skelter La bohème for Scottish Opera. The effervescent director/designer duo set Puccini’s heart-tugging opera in the back street flea markets of 1920s Paris, where post-war poverty was countered by an irrepressible cosmopolitan bohemianism, where Cocteau rubbed shoulders with Hemmingway, Gertrude Stein with Ezra Pound, plenty Rodolfos played loose with plenty Mimis. This is about community, its fiery dynamics, its outrageous fingers-up to social taboos. At another level, it’s a reminder that death is no respecter of time and tide; once you’re gone, you’re gone. In this production, Mimi literally disappears from her deathbed.