La Bohème, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Glyndebourne

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy More Basildon than Bastille, David McVicar’s grungy staging of La Bohème heralded the new millennium amidst concrete and steel, fire hazards and fire escapes, chavs and chav nots, bringing our “bohemians” into the here and now with a cynical nod or two at our own struggling youth culture and the slightly surreal sensation of stepping in from tea at Glyndebourne’s Mildmay room to an urban jungle where the only splash of colour is a street poster for Bohème in, naturally, the style of the art nouveau period. But appearances can be deceptive and a faltering romance blooms amidst the grimness with a panoply of naked light bulbs standing in for stars as Mimi and Rudolfo play out a West Side Story kind of rapture on the fire escape and a chorus line of Christmas revelers and the obligatory drag queens dodge the fuzz outside Cafe Momus. But not before good time girl Musetta sets the tone of the night with her cabaret “turn” and Irina Iordachescu steps up to the plate with a terrifically accomplished “Waltz Song”. His greatest asset at this point is a bright vibrant top and bags of conviction, she is an undoubted star whose heartfelt and vocally uninhibited third act so movingly prefigured her eventual death when only Puccini’s orchestra - such a brilliant stroke, this - notices the moment of her passing.