If one is contemporising bohГЁme, we need to know our location, and some reference to the reality of Covid feels necessary. There is a distinct lack of edge, of a commitment to deconstructing the opera, that leaves the performers unsupported. But this opening production could have gone to greater lengths to match it. Visiting Nevill Holt Opera is a five-star experience, from the staggering house and superb gardens, to the Antony Gormley and Nic Fiddian-Green sculptures. This is a team of excellent young singers sensitively working together, and they make the finale truly moving. Peter Scott DrackleyвЂ™s Rodolfo, Christopher NairneвЂ™s Marcello and Dingle YandellвЂ™s Colline are all strong. Soprano Alexandra Oomens has the sass for Musetta, replete in Sergeant Pepper jacket and glitter boots.ДЄnd baritone Dominic Sedgwick is a stand-out as the philosopher Schaunard, his dark vocal resonance and charisma proving he is someone to watch. Nigerian-American soprano Francesca ChiejinaвЂ™s is a superior Mimi, soaring above the score. Mimi manipulates the space, navigating some very worrying enormous sliding doors, guiding the action into interior intimacy or leaving it shivering outside in the snow.Дespite the welcome decision to integrate some energetic work from local school children playing Act IIвЂ™s street chorus, this production is led by its performers, not its direction. The prefabricated rectangle that forms the studentsвЂ™ flat, CafГ© Momus and their work space sits within the exposed brick box of the stage. The lovers, absorbed by their spirited community of fellow artists, struggle to maintain a relationship, trying and ultimately failing to avoid the inevitability of MimiвЂ™s death.Д«asia BiЕ„kowskaвЂ™s set feels like a continuation of Nevill HoltвЂ™s award-winning Witherford Watson Mann auditorium: clean lines, modern materials, nothing extra.

Ever present is the spectre of MimiвЂ™s tuberculosis.

We see seamstress Mimi seeking candlelight from her poet neighbour Rodolfo, fuelling a narrative rush of love at first sight. Here, the tale of the poverty-stricken lovers who stumble upon each other during a power-cut feels like Jonathan LarsonвЂ™s Rent.

Benjamin Britten castigated it as overly simplistic, and yet it has indelibly endured. It did when it premiered in Turin in 1896. Together with the excellent Manchester Camerata, conducted by NHOвЂ™s Artistic Director Nicholas Chalmers, the piece at times feels faultless.Д«ohГЁme often polarises opinion. The setting is plain and grey, which has an oddly dichotomous effect: lifting the music outside its environs, putting the arias and ensemble work from the youthful cast into relief, but also often becoming visceral, deeply moving and raw. There is something distinctly ordinary about these proceedings. They wear converse trainers and Hawaiian shirts, live in what looks like an eco-prefab and face Christmas Eve among kids in a Westfield shopping mall.

Similarly to David McVicarвЂ™s ripped-jeans-and-hoodie revival of BohГЁme at Glyndebourne in 2011, our four starving artists are here in a non-specified contemporary world. While one may crave the latter in the current, troubled climate, director Mathilda du Tillieul McNicol goes for the former and braver option. Post-pandemic, a director could approach PucciniвЂ™s most popular and culturally appropriated opera in one of two ways: either choose a contemporary interpretation, exploiting the parallels between 1830s Paris and a group of struggling 2020s artists unable to pay their energy bills while watching a loved one die from a respiratory virus or expunge these present-day comparisons and escape into the conventional romanticism of PucciniвЂ™s soaring score and 19th-century melodrama.

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