La Bohème

La Bohème or ‘le Spleen de Paris’

Living on love and art in a ice-cold attic, mocking poverty and turning light-heartedness into a weapon against adversity: such is the madcap challenge taken up by the characters in Scenes from the Life of Bohemians (1851), Henry Murger's short novel which later inspired Puccini's opera (1895). By showing ‘bohemians’ dreaming and failing in their lives, Puccini and his librettists subvert the success story that Murger had imagined. La Bohème is a bleak and disillusioned Christmas tale that exalts a sublime tragedy, so operatic (and inevitably tearful) that it strikes the audience deep in the heart. David Geselson's production places Bohème in the context of the revolutionary movements of the 19th century, with Delacroix as a political and pictorial reference. Mimì and Musetta are the emblematic figures of this social freedom that seeks to triumph in death and love respectively. In doing so, he reveals through these two women a poignant form of commitment: that of loving and living life to the full, even when the outcome is known in advance and everything seems to be conspiring against the possibility of future happiness.

‘They call me Mimì,
But my real name is Lucia.
My story is a short one...’

A film and a book to delve deeper into the subject:

• La Vie de bohème (Aki Kaurismäki, 1992): A modern and stylised film adaptation of Murger's original story (to be discovered at Cinema Cameo Commanderie, more information here).
• Le Spleen de Paris (Charles Baudelaire): Prose poems blending beauty and misery, fleeting desires and vague sorrows. Love is often impossible or wounded. A poetic mirror to the world of Mimì and Rodolfo. (Poésie Gallimard)