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

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. It’s a project on an ambitious scale, managed with formidable efficiency in the service of artistic values that are as high as any at the Coliseum.

So you park up in front of a massive outdoor stage, flanked by two equally massive screens, and you’re free to leave your car and stroll around the Palace grounds until the performance starts. (The pedalo boats had been tied up for the night, which seemed like a missed opportunity.) The performers look tiny, though no tinier than they’d appear from an affordable seat on St Martin’s Lane. The big screens help, and with the sound broadcast to your car radio the results are at least as good as a live cinema relay. Except instead of the aroma of popcorn, you’re immersed in car fug.