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.
Duration
2 h 30 with interval
Prices
5 - 85 €
Show in Italian, surtitles
From 7 years
La Bohème, opera in four acts
First performed on 1 February 1896 at the Teatro Regio in Turin
Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
Giacomo Puccini
Opéra national de Nancy-Lorraine
théâtre de Caen, Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Opéra de Dijon, Opéra de Reims
Marta Gardolińska
Renaud Madore
Anass Ismat
David Geselson
Lisa Navarro
Benjamin Moreau
Jérémie Papin
Jérémie Scheidler
Sophie Bricaire
Lucie Peyramaure
Angel Romero
Lilian Farahani
Yoann Dubruque
Blaise Malaba
Louis de Lavignère
* Soloists from the Opéra national de Nancy-Lorraine and Opéra de Dijon choruses
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