New York Opera Offers Effective ‘La Boheme’

Opera lovers will ever anticipate and seek out the next great Mimi and Rodolfo, but discovering incipient stars is just one of the joys of “La Boheme.”

As demonstrated again Wednesday night, when the New York City Opera National Company returned to the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, “Boheme” can be musically and dramatically successful without famous names or inflated fees. Solid conducting, followable stage direction and informed supertitles can deliver Puccini’s beloved opera with little else added.

Conducted authoritatively by Karen Kamensek and staged unobtrusively but in moments with great sensitivity by Beth Greenberg, this production--credited to longtime NYCO designer Lloyd Evans--looks inexpensive but sounds like the real thing, a loving re-creation of a genuine masterpiece.

Behaving and singing with apparent spontaneity, the principals move naturally and without self-consciousness. The result is dramatic effectiveness.

In the changing casts, the opening-night Mimi, Maryanne Telese, strongly upheld the NYCO tradition; the parent company, after all, has been successful in the “Boheme” business for decades. Telese’s Italianate singing--beauteous, warm, text-caressing, the high notes effortless and bright--is a model.

Her colleagues generally showed better acting than singing, though Indira Mahajan proved a Musetta of charismatic skill. Emmanuel di Villarosa (Rodolfo) and Stephen Lusmann (Marcello) kept the play going; Gregory Rahming impersonated a rambunctious, watchable Schaunard, while Valentin Peytchinov was a resonant and promising Colline. Carlos Conde’s Alcindoro clearly has bigger things in his future. The 29-member pit orchestra played well, if in many moments more blaringly than necessary.

* New York City Opera National Company repeats Puccini’s “La Boheme” tonight at 8; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; and Sunday at 2 and 8 p.m., Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos, (800) 300-4345. $15-$55.