As spring slides inexorably towards summer, WA Opera is transporting us back to a 1920s Parisian winter with a new co-production with Opera Queensland of Puccini’s La bohème. Dare I say the effect is as dazzling as snow in sunshine? Surely the opera’s uber-romantic poet Rodolfo would have.

Of course, this isn’t the first time the events of Puccini’s evergreen opera have been transposed from the 19th century to the interwar years of the following century: one only has to think of Gale Edward’s hugely popular Weimar-period production for Opera Australia from 2011.

WA Opera’s La bohème. Photo © Dylan Alcock / West Beach Studio

Director Matt Reuben James Ward’s new take on an old classic combines some of the visual chic of Edward’s production with the grittiness of Simon Phillips’ down-and-dirty 2005 production – also originally for Opera Australia but seen here in Perth – set in a contemporary apartment block.

The centrepiece of set and costume designer Charles Davis’ ingenious design is a large, rotating greenhouse whose often shadow-animated exterior and haphazardly-furnished interior enjoy act-by-act costume changes in accordance with this story of two very different women and four youthful creative...