La Bohème rolls into town

Pirouetting roller skaters, jugglers and tumblers, a military band, caged birds and flower sellers swarmed into the Albert Hall last night and transformed it into a corner of Left Bank Paris, setting of Puccini's best-loved opera La Bohème.

Action, updated to the Forties, took place on a temporary multiple stage in the arena. With a cast of 100-plus and an audience of 4,000, this was no ordinary staging. Even so, why should Raymond Gubbay's seventh opera-in-the-round have whipped up such a frenzy of anticipation? New Bohèmes, hardly rare, are usually greeted with a polite yawn.

But all eyes are currently on Gubbay, fast metamorphosing from wily pack-'em-in impresario to London's operatic saviour and champion. Next month he launches a new opera company at the Savoy.

If this small-scale enterprise enjoys the kind of success his arena events now earn, he will have captured both ends of a crowded market. Squeezed uncomfortably in the middle is ENO still struggling to reopen its Coliseum home - scheduled for tonight but, significantly, without press.

The second excitement is the choice of Euro-American director Francesca Zambello. Courted by opera-houses and theatres the world over, for her to collaborate with Gubbay is like finding Armani designing cardigans for Marks and Spencer. And why not?

Few could handle a cast this size with such masterly drill and, at the same time, convey the essential intimacy of love in a garret. The Café Momus scene was a visual coup, full of human chaos yet still clear and ordered, helped by designer Peter J Davison's clearly delineated stage areas.

The opening night cast was led by Mary Plazas as the seamstress Mimi, of the tiny frozen hands and bad cough. Huge-voiced and musically unassailable, yet slight enough to be picked up by her lover like a limp rag doll, she went to the heart of this fragile creature.

Peter Wedd's Rodolfo is as yet slightly still but he has all the notes and looks the part. The fickle cabaret queen Musetta (Majella Cullagh), a visual hybrid of Vivienne Westwood and Madonna, cut a wild dash with Grant Doyle as her on-off lover Marcello.

Musically, adjustments still have to be made to the balance of amplified voice and orchestra (the Royal Philharmonic), which sometimes led to lapses of coordination. With 19 performances yet to run, this problem will surely diminish. David Parry, conducting, had also translated the libretto into largely audible, often colloquial (a loud "piss artist" sticks in the mind) English.

As for the audience in this, the people's opera, they came in furs and leather, bobble hats and basques. Several were novices, young and old. One usually preferred swing and Dean Martin and had been to Ratpack twice. What a spectacle, enthused one of a grey-haired trio in from the suburbs.