Act III remains messy, from the clunky tollgate and the furniture class at the start to some weird touches at the end (Mimì, supposedly hidden, slinking around the stage in plain view, and Musetta and Marcello, after their signature brawling, getting their kit off in the blizzard).

Karah Son as Mimì and Kang Wang as Rodolfo in La Bohème (photograph by Prudence Upton)

As ever, Giacomo Puccini’s masterpiece – aided by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa’s inspired libretto, based on Mürger’s 1851 novel – survives any directorial indulgences. The score, briskly and suavely conducted here by Carlo Goldstein, brims with unique melodies, often aired briefly then nonchalantly dropped. In this swift-moving opera there are few set arias: the two famous ones, in Act I, were added late in the day. Rodolfo only has one, but it is the most celebrated tenor aria in Italian opera.

All the principals were first-rate; it’s hard to recall a more uniformly well-sung Bohème.

This was Karah Son’s first Mimì in Australia after two Cio-Cio-Sans and, more recently, a superlative Liù. Son has a powerful soprano, with an exceptional top register. There were some individual touches in her performance: blowing out her candle in Act I to prolong the flirtation (the wind, of course, should blow it out); and an unusual note of dejection and fatalism at the end of Act III when she prepares to leave Rodolfo and talks about sending the concierge around to collect her few things. By ‘Sono andati?’, with its magnificent orchestral prelude and the echoes of everything that has happened to this doomed, improbable couple, the South Korean soprano was in luminous form.

Kang Wang, making his company début, was a revelation as Rodolfo. It’s little wonder that this young Australian tenor, born in China to opera-singer parents, is turning heads around the world. Singing and acting with extraordinary freedom and poise, he was a most plausible poet and lover. ‘Che gelida manina’ – clearly Wang’s kind of music – revealed a thrilling tenor, with real ping at the top, but there is also a pleasing baritonal quality to this arresting voice. Opera Australia may have just found its next real thing.

Samuel Dundas as Marcello, Richard Anderson as Colline, Michael Lampard as Schaunard, Kang Wang as Rodolfo, and Karah Son as Mimì in La Bohème (photograph by Prudence Upton)

Musetta in this and many other productions can be a torrid vamp, but Julie Lea Goodwin made something interesting of her – more nuanced at the Café Momus and rather affecting in Act IV, as Musetta trades her jewels for a muff and quietly anguishes about the state of her affairs with Marcello.

Young company veteran Samuel Dundas was born to sing Marcello; he has been doing so since 2013 (his company début). A natural actor, he looks the part – forceful, nimble, ever drawn to and bewildered by Musetta – and sings with real power and focus. Marcello has no arias as such, but Dundas was fine in the Act II exchange with Mimì (love being either honey or poison, depending on taste) and in the soulful duet with Rodolfo in Act IV.

The audience was in enthusiastic form, too much so at times. ‘Che gelida manina’, ‘Mi chiamano Mimì’, and ‘O soave fanciulla’ should be heard as an unbroken sequence; they’re written that way. But this requires a certain confidence and restraint from singers, conductor, and audience alike. After Colline’s tender little farewell to his coat in Act IV, Maestro Goldstein and Richard Alexander waited awkwardly for the applause that eventually came. This was followed by another proud chorus of coughing from the Sydney audience, blighting the wonderful music that ends Puccini’s opera.

La Bohème continues at the Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House, until 30 January 2020. Performance attended: January 2.