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[Melodie]

Performers get skates on for La Bohème auditions

John Ezard
Tuesday October 7, 2003
The Guardian

Rodolfo (to his lover Mimi, who is stricken with tuberculosis): "How cold your little hand is! I know the cure ... we'll warm you up by buckling on the skates and going for a spin to the Café Momus."

The most famous line in La Bohème, the most beloved of all romantic operas, came closer to being performed like that yesterday with the announcement that, for the first time, part of it is to be played on rollerskates.

The populist impresario Raymond Gubbay, who has a track record of bringing new audiences as well as new tricks to opera, unveiled plans for a £2m production of Puccini's work at the Royal Albert Hall in February.

The project is being welcomed by the hundreds of rollerskaters left with no outlet for their skills in London after the demise of Starlight Express. Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical recruited new casts of 35 skaters each year during its 18-year West End run. Yesterday one skater estimated that at least 100 "really talented" artistes-on-wheels were still available.

Mr Gubbay's production, staged by the director Francesca Zambello, will need a batch of them for the scenes in the Café Momus, where the young Bohemians carouse.

Rollerskates are being used partly as a gimmick to intrigue the audiences of thousands, which the unsubsidised project needs to break even. But they will also allow the waiters to dart with festive excitement around the vast playing area of the hall's in-the-round stage.

"It gives the choreography lots of movement," Zambello said. "And it gives us a chance to employ people who have not been employed since Starlight Express".

The Albert Hall's chief executive, David Elliott, said: "One thing I want to do is break down this slightly artificial pigeonholing of low art and high art. In their day Puccini and others before him had hugely populist audiences."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1057346,00.html