Don’t cry for Mimi, Puccini

If I could get just one favor out of that suave Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini, it would be to end the beloved “La Boheme” at the completion of Act I. Everyone is happy, everyone is drinking wine, everyone is kissing somebody else, and everyone is, well, alive.

OK, OK. That’s expecting a little too much, I know. But if you saw the New York City Opera National Company, which performed “La Boheme” yesterday at the Maine Center for the Arts, then you know what it feels like to go from having all that fun — with perky performers directed by Beth Greenberg and expert musicians under the passionate baton of Joseph Colaneri — to watching Mimi’s downer death scene, which never fails to yank a few tears out of your head. Really, it’s a bit much, and I wish we could all stop at the party part when everyone is acting goofy.

Mind you, it’s not as if I’m nuts about the character Mimi, played robustly by Sara Catarine. Mimi doesn’t even know why everybody calls her Mimi, which is not her real name. Plus, she’s always coughing all over everybody and that’s just plain rude.

But Rodolfo, her lover, is another story. I HATE to see him so upset. Come to think of it, the way he expresses pain is just the type of thing a woman likes to know her lover will do if she has a chronic cough and might be dying. So that, perhaps, justifies the last two acts.

Plus, if Rodolfo has four friends who will stand around the bed and sing glorious songs — in very nice harmony I might add — then that’s pretty good, too. In fact, next time I get sick, I want the tenor Michael Hayes (Rodolfo) to hang out at my house and sing with that velvety voice until I’m better. It would also be quite fine with me if he brought along John Packard (Marcello), Gregory Rahming (Schaunard), Brian Jauhiainen (Colline) and April-Joy Gutierrez (Musetta). These guys are such smart singers and play their characters as such a great gang of neighborhood buddies that they could bring anybody back to good health.

Well, maybe not Mimi, but that’s the problem with opera plots. The voice, not the play, is the thing.

The special treat in this year’s touring opera offering — in addition to a totally successful performance — was the massive set which changed three times in as many intermissions. According to one backstage official, it was the biggest, tallest set ever to get loaded into the hall.

Still, no matter how much I wish Puccini had hung around a bit more in those scenes about the wild side of bohemian Paris in the 1890s, I think it’s fair to say that a sold-out audience at the Maine Centerdidn’t really care about the outcome in the same way I did. They wanted to be thoroughly charmed by the NYC Opera. And they were. That seems to happen annually with the popular opera events — no matter how much tissue you need by the end.