When you enter the auditorium for Richard Jones’s new production of La bohème at Covent Garden — only its third at this address, and the first since 1974 — fake snow is already falling on Stewart Laing’s empty stage.
The wintry fall persists as huge and impressive scenic elements are wheeled upstage — a spartan attic for the bohemians’ barely furnished dwelling, a simple hut with Marcello’s warriors painted on one of its walls that slowly glides across the stage as Rodolfo’s on-off relationship with the consumptive Mimi gradually falls apart. Most spectacular of all is the street scene in which three adjacent shopping arcades whirl like dodgems around the space before they are replaced by a grand dining palace.
If it looks a bit