La Boheme Review
Looked like my decision to subscribe La Boheme on Astro Box Office Events paid off. A quick recap of the show : Had I not read the synopsis of La Boheme prior to watching the opera, I would be totally lost. The songs, the arias, the Everything was sung in Italian. When I asked my Italian friend if he’s ever watched La Boheme or any other opera, he flatly said no, because he’d usually couldn’t understand a single word. LOL. Well, if an Italian doesn’t understand squat, then that probably means I’m not a total idiot.
Anyway, since I’ve already read the synopsis of the show, what I got from watching the show was come to the realisation of what a genius Jonathan Larson was. How he adapted La Boheme into Rent. Most of the characters were there.. Rodolfo the poet became Roger the songwriter, Marcello the painter became Mark the filmmaker, Mimi the seamstress became Mimi the stripper, Musetta the singer became Maureen the performance artist, Schaunard the musician became Angel (Dumott Schunard) the drag queen, Colline the philospher became (Tom) Collins the lecturer, and Benoit the landlord became Benny the landlord. And the theme of Parisians fighting poverty and diseases in the 1830s, became New Yorkers fighting poverty and AIDS in 1990s Alphabet City.
The outdoor stage La Boheme was performed on was magnificent. It was titled to a few degrees so that everyone in the audience can get a wholesome view of everything. The scene when Rodolpho first met Mimi was eeriely similar as to when Roger first met Mimi during the Light My Candle. Again, sheer genius on Larson’s adaptation. And of course, there was Musetta’s Waltz which was used in Roger’s Your Eyes. But like I said, had I not read the synopsis of the show I would totally be lost since there were absolutely no subtitles. And to tell you the truth, I literally dozed off for like 20 minutes during the one and a half hours cause parts of it was totally boring.
Like I said, I initially thought it would be a good introduction of operas for an idjit like me. Apparently I was wrong, and honestly, I thought it was kind of a waste of RM19.90 - a lot more than I would care to spend again on something like this. But lo and behold, 3 days later someone from Astro called and gave me two tickets to watch M The Opera! Granted that the tickets were only worth RM60, I still made a RM40.10 profit out of it.
M The Opera Review
So I dragged my reluctant friend to come watch it with me. I was sceptic. A Malaysian made opera? How pretentious can you get? And don’t even get me started on what people were wearing that night. Feathered boa? Bitch please, unless you’re actually in the show (which incidentally is about a fashion designer), you’re just screaming out media-whore.
(These following paragraphs will contain ’spoilers’ to the opera, so if you don’t want to be spoiled, skip these next two paragraph.)
The show is about basically about M, a fashion designer. It starts off by telling M’s backstory - his childhood, his close friend Sepi, and his mother, a famous and gifted seamstress. His mother died while giving birth to his brother who was an illegitimate child. They found a silver needle in his baby brother’s hands (*gasp*) which caused his mother’s death. The needle was given to M and in turn, he trusted it to Sepi, while his brother was taken away.
Fast forward to the present day. M is a celebrated fashion designer having graduated from Japan. Bla bla.. meets a mysterious, rival designer, Kerabat, who eventually steals his thunder and the love of his life (Sepi - who then decided to give M’s needle -his muse- to Kerabat). M makes a comeback, wins back Sepi and asks her to marry him. Kerabat then poisons M, who then dies on his wedding day. They later realise that Kerabat and M were half-brothers (like we didn’t see that one coming a thousand miles away). Sepi cries unconsollably (eeriely like Rodolpho at the end of La Boheme). The end. In the words of Che Guevara, Goodnight and thank you.
(end of ’spoiler’ section)
Just like La Boheme, had I not read the synopsis in the program book, I would totally be lost. In fact, the wordings in the program book used were too damn bombastic, it took me at least two readings to actually understand a little bit of their storyline. Or maybe I’m just thick? Anyway, I gave the program book to my friend and asked her to give me a brief synopsis since I can’t be bothered to be reading something that is beyond Lord Of The Rings standard, 10 minutes before the show started. My friend basically said, “ohmigod it’s like a typical Malay drama”. And my response to her was “So you mean, there’s going to be some adegan makan-makan and adegan insaf?”. And sure enough, there were.
As for the show itself, it was marred more than a couple of times when the singer’s voice was totally drowned out by the loud music. I mean, MAN, that was annoying as hell. Then, of course there were the opera bits. The arias made my ears hurt, and even though it was sung in Malay and English, I couldn’t understand anything at all. It was rather nice of the organizers/producer to provide subtitles at the top of the stage. Unfortunately, it made things more confusing than ever since it was never in sync with what the singers were singing on stage. I also felt that the show got really lazy after the second act. Everything came off at an abrupt end. I can’t help but feel they got kinda lazy and the writers just casually said “let’s get this over and done with”.
On the plus side (yes, there is a plus side), the singing, when it wasn’t drowned out by the music, was excellent particularly by Khir Rahman (who played M) and also Maizurah (who played M’s mother). I was also impressed by the very smooth transitions in between scenes. And the show incorporated a lot of music influences such as traditional Malay, Indonesian, Japanese and the Opera. The show itself is a mix between musical theater, an opera, a fashion show and modern contemporary dance. Some may argue that the show was trying too damn hard to impress by incorporating so many elements. So many things crammed into one.
But I beg to differ. For one thing, the show really felt Malaysian (for both the good and bad reasons). Even though it’s called M The Opera, it really is a mix between musical theater and tiny bits of opera thrown in. At least it tries to introduce these many different artistic forms to the viewing public, who otherwise would not enjoy such things. The show was a brave attempt and despite it’s many many pitfalls, I would actually recommend this to people I know.
However, it has also cemented my stand on operas. Operas are definitely NOT for me.
