Opera for eyes first, ears second

“La Boheme” has come to Broadway with all the fanfare of a hot show. “La Boheme” is, of course, Puccini’s beloved opera and the source of inspiration for another hit show, “Rent.” But that is not why audiences will likely throng to it at the Broadway Theatre. Baz Luhrmann is why. “La Boheme” was also an inspiration for his visually brash musical film, “Moulin Rouge!”

Those besotted by the Baz pizazz, the nonstop showmanship and eye-popping exuberance, get their 17 exuberant minutes. Act 2, the Cafe Momus scene, is a spectacular delight, a kind of Disneyland-with-prostitutes vision of Paris in the 1950s that seems to burst off the stage.

Opera lovers needn’t fear. Luhrmann hasn’t gone too far. A young, handsome cast sings the opera in Italian as written. The amplification is far subtler than the miserable Broadway norm and almost pleasurable. To compensate for singing that is not of a particularly high standard -- though, for the most part, OK -- there is a sense of intimacy and detailed bits of characterization that are hard to equal in a large opera house.

Nor do those intimidated by opera have much to fear. Luhrmann desperately wants to entertain you. This “Boheme” is a tale well told, full of wit, unabashed sentiment and buoyant stagecraft, that goes by surprisingly quickly and is surprisingly painless.

But it is also surprisingly flat -- an opera production that begins, and pretty much ends, with stagecraft. Music comes second. And the flat moments are the big ones, including the opera’s beginning and ending and most of its climaxes.

Luhrmann’s starting point is exciting theatrical chutzpah. At every moment, he reminds us that theater is artificial. The complex, many-faceted sets, by Catherine Martin, Luhrmann’s wife and usual collaborator, are full of realistic details that also mock realism. Stagehands remain on stage throughout the performance, wheeling the sets this way and that.

English titles are used and they are emphatically self-conscious. Since the opera is updated from the 1890s to Paris in 1957, Puccini’s bohemians become French hipsters. Martin and her costume co-designer, Angus Strathie, dress them in what appear to be their vivid fantasy of a ‘50s Paris look -- a sexy tight suit for Musetta, a yellow car coat for Schaunard, a pink beret for Mimi. And Luhrmann has had the original text translated into a not very convincing Americanized jargon and beamed on as many as four different screens at once, often in cartoony typefaces. “Hey, daddy-o,” is the musician Schaunard’s greeting.

Yet through all this advertisement of the artificial, the show is expected to be so completely involving that we lose ourselves in it anyway. When that works, it feels like magic.

But visual fantasy cannot do that for very long. A serious and, I think, fatal compromise is in relying on a puny orchestra of 28. Although opera-goers don’t always realize it, they get to know and love “Boheme’s” memorable starving artists, get caught up in the tempestuous affair of Rodolfo and Mimi, because Puccini brings the scenes to life and reveals the characters’ inner lives most effectively through his orchestra. Here, thanks to a tinny theater pit band, trivial new orchestrations and cursory conducting by Constantine Kitsopoulos, the central emotive force in Puccini’s opera barely even finds its way onto the spectator’s radar screen.

An important letdown, for instance, is the popular love duet between the poet Rodolfo and the neighbor he has just met, Mimi. Luhrmann creates a visual revelation of pure romance. There they are on the roof of Rodolfo’s garret, under the production’s trademark red “L’Amour” sign; Paris, gorgeous in the moonlight, lies under them. Their passion swells to the ecstasy of first love.

In one of Puccini’s most inspired moments, he drenches the scene with an orchestral climax, played with full emotion. It lasts only a few seconds, but it carries that ecstasy to every seat in the house. But here it becomes anticlimax when that moment has so little orchestral weight, making what looks like grand romance feel more like a coy bar pickup.

Likewise, the minimal orchestra outburst as Rodolfo discovers Mimi’s death turns “Boheme’s” famously wrenching moment into a perfunctory ending.

There are three casts for Rodolfo and Mimi -- and two for Musetta -- because these roles are too demanding to be sung eight times a week. For the cast I saw, neither the light-voiced tenor Alfred Boe nor the more dramatic soprano Wei Huang demonstrated much vocal personality, or even much stage chemistry, good though they looked.

In fact, the only characters that really came to life were Daniel Okulitch’s cocky Schaunard and Jessica Comeau’s spunky, funny, lascivious Musetta. As the painter Marcello, Ben Davis sounded slightly strained. As the philosopher Colline, Daniel Webb seemed as though the strain of nightly preview performances had already taken its toll on his voice. The demands of Broadway may not do these young singers good if the show has a long run. The small parts are all nicely handled by character actors.

A dozen years ago Luhrmann staged “La Boheme” for the Australian Opera. It was a far more modest version of the new production, but also one with young, handsome singers.

Recently issued on DVD, it makes a successful video -- lively, romantic, moving, hip. All the added neon eye candy that Broadway can afford is mostly empty calories.

Still a Broadway “La Boheme” is not necessarily a bad thing. It just might entice new audiences enthralled by it into the opera house, ready to be emotionally blown away.

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‘La Boheme’

Where: Broadway Theatre, 1681 Broadway, New York

When: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesday and Saturday, 2 p.m.; Sunday, 3 p.m.

Price: $20 to $95

Contact: (800) 432-7250