First tears flow, then Champagne

There were sobs on both sides of the supertitles when Baz Luhrmann’s over-the-top take on Puccini’s “La Boheme” opened at the Ahmanson Theatre. Mimi -- the ravishing soprano Kelly Kaduce -- not only died in Act 4 but cried when she took her bows. Tears also glistened on the cheeks of her poet-lover, the passionate Rodolfo -- Tony Award-winning tenor David Miller -- as he basked in applause. And actress Blythe Danner’s tears flowed so copiously as she watched the first two acts that close pal Antoinette Bill rushed the bar at intermission for napkins. “I don’t know how I’ll get through the second two acts,” Danner said. Playwright Neil Simon also wept. “Very much,” he said. Ditto actress Eva Marie Saint. “It’s one of the most romantic shows I’ve ever seen. Incredible!”

“What a night!” Center Theatre Group artistic director and producer Gordon Davidson said, welcoming 1,000 guests to the French-themed post-performance bash in the Grand Hall of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. “Besides the beautiful staging and extraordinary score, it was performed with such honesty and beauty and human emotion, that, what do we do? We cry! And it’s a good cry.”

With that, a representative of Champagne Mumm lopped the neck off a bottle of bubbly and the crowd tipped their flutes to Luhrmann, who raved about Los Angeles audiences. “L.A.’s a place known for embracing innovation and invention, a place where something like this show is not going to be met with a whole lot of fear,” he said. He also approved of the audience’s efficient reading of the production’s supertitles. “I could tell they were reading them very fast -- getting a lot of the language humor.”

After sweeping across the plaza from the Ahmanson to the Pavilion, the crowd dived into buffets redolent with French-inspired fare: spicy sausages, croque monsieurs, crepes suzette and profiteroles. Wearing a pale blue dress, Kaduce made her entrance gracefully and quietly, manifesting the same dignity she did onstage. “The biggest challenge of this role is to convey the physical illness and still be able to sing, especially in the third and fourth acts,” she said during Sunday’s party. “To sing you need to be upright, strong and sturdy. It is very difficult.”

Both Kaduce and Miller’s tears during their bows were the result of their feeling “crushed every time” they perform “as the result of Baz helping us to make each performance new, which is one of the tools he has given us,” Miller said. “He has taught us to investigate the opera, moment by moment, the emotion, the truth of the drama.”

How does Miller survive the passion of it all? “After each time, I have to sleep until noon the next day,” he said.