Richard Bratby

I pounded my car horn like a Neapolitan cabbie: ENO’s drive-in Bohème reviewed

The artistic values of this ambitious project were as high as any at the Coliseum

Natalya Romaniw as Mimi and the Bohemians as north London crusties slumming it in a campervan in ENO’s drive-in La bohème. Credit: © Lloyd Winters, courtesy of English National Opera 
issue 26 September 2020

The email from English National Opera was blunt: ‘Your arrival time is 18.25. If you arrive outside your allocated time slot, you may not be allowed entry.’ Perhaps, to habitual London drivers — if such people exist — negotiating the residential streets of Muswell Hill during a Saturday rush hour is all good clean urban fun. I couldn’t say. I just know that by the time I’d been marshalled into a parking space at Alexandra Palace, my no-claims bonus miraculously still intact, I was in no mood for an evening of updated and interval-free Puccini.

Three hours later I was pounding my car horn like a Neapolitan cabbie. ENO’s announcement of Britain’s first live drive-in opera provoked scepticism: this is a company with a history of announcing high-profile gimmicks that never quite happen or quietly flop. As it turned out, this newly conceived production of La bohème was not a gimmick, and it emphatically wasn’t a flop.

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