A Fresh Mix Results in a Pleasant ‘Boheme’ at Bowl

After completing a third weekend of outdoor pops concerts--seven performances, concluding Saturday--John Mauceri and his Hollywood Bowl Orchestra offered a little encore on Sunday night. It was a concert performance of Puccini’s “La Boheme,” cast mostly with “emerging” opera singers from Europe and this country and it brought together experienced musical forces and promising talents in a fresh mix.

This “Boheme,” of course, could not be compared to the Bowl’s last revival of Puccini’s most popular opera; that was in 1973, and offered the local debut of Luciano Pavarotti and of the then practically unknown Katia Ricciarelli.

And the occasion could not be compared to the original event scheduled for July 28 of this year, a joint appearance by the acclaimed young singing couple Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. Before this Bowl season even began, the much-hyped soprano and tenor had canceled their Cahuenga Pass date.

What remained, for a genial crowd on Sunday, was a decent run-through of the familiar opera, handsomely played by the Bowl Orchestra and pleasingly if undistinctively sung by Natalia Dercho (Mimi), Gwynne Geyer (Musetta), Gabriel Sade (Rodolfo), Frank Hernandez (Marcello), Eduardo del Campo (Schaunard), Jeffrey Wells (Colline), Ara Berberian (Benoit and Alcindoro) and a chorus of members of the Overture Company of Opera Pacific.

Despite some lagging in Acts 1 and 3, Mauceri kept the work on track and the singers nicely supported. Best of the lot was the Russian-born Dercho, a dark-voiced Mimi with artistic instincts and solid technique. Geyer’s bland Musetta may have suffered, as did some of her colleagues, from the inconsistencies of the sound system and its busy knob-adjusters.

As Rodolfo, Sade pleased, as far as he went, but his top notes proved less than thrilling and his vocal ardor was only part time. For promise alone, Hernandez’s healthy-sounding Marcello deserves praise, yet it is still too early to begin to tote up his achievement. Campo proved a vigorous, overstated Schaunard, Wells a woolly Colline. The only non-debutant in this company was the solid Berberian, who sang his small parts with genuine focus and a dignity his fellows have not yet learned.