I went to La Bohème at the Kungliga Operan on Thursday. Curiously, they’ve decided to set the Opera in a Södermalm-ish present day,

Södermalm is the East Village of Stockholm. with protagonists wearing hoods and jeans and leather jackets.

Sound familiar? The musical Rent borrowed La Bohème’s plot outline.Here is a slightly meatier synopsis of La Bohème. Now the compliment has been returned, with a traditional production of La Bohème adopting a contemporary sheen.

But not all too convincingly. Rent took liberties with the storyI never saw Rent, of course. One lives in New York for the choice, not to actually choose. Choosing is only necessary when you entertain tourist friends. that a faithful production of La Bohème can’t. Dying of consumption in a Swedish nanny state? I don’t think so.

AIDS worked in Rent. Perhaps we should just pretend Mimi has SARS? And while no heat or light for starving artists during an East Village rent strike might make sense, in Stockholm they’d be in state-subsidized apartments and on to their second child.

There are some fateful set design choices too. The loft with which the opera opens—in fact a float that is wheeled on to the stage—is a tricky affair. At the close of the first scene, the incipient lovers are meant to be basking in moonlight as the stage drifts off slowly, not holding on for dear life atop an Abrams tank making for Baghdad. It’s hard to profess eternal love when you’re about to take a running dive through a perspex window.

But these are just quibbles. When Rodolphe launched into Che gelida manina [mp3]. I got the shivers down the spine, which is a rare enough occurrence for me to declare the evening a stunning succcess then and there. Last time that happened was during the opening sequence of Fellowship of the Ring, in particular the bit where the orcs fall off the ledge during the battle.