Solid arguments can be made for the staging of the Metropolitan Opera production or the vocal quality of the San Francisco production, but the Australian Opera offers the closest identification of performers with the characters they represent. On DVD, La Bohème is the work where the competition is strongest. Youthful high spirits and vulnerability are delicately portrayed, with sharp contrasts between the Parisian bohemians' abject poverty and their carefree lifestyle.

'Oh yes,' said a friend, 'that's the good one where everybody is the right age.' The youth and freshness of the singers are, in fact, major assets in this production. It might be possible to know this La Bohème and not love it, but I have never met anyone who felt that way. This opera in four acts features a libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica after Henry Murger's novel Scenes de la Vie de Boheme. They have crafted a compelling and artful reworking of the opera, using the post-war privations of 1950s Paris as a convincing setting and capturing, above all else, the youthfulness and intensity of the story with a raw sincerity.

Please note that any bag may be subject to search upon entry.Īudience members will be required to wear masks at all indoor Spoleto Festival USA performances.Recorded live at the Sydney Opera House, this Australian Opera production of Puccini's perennial favorite was staged by the creative team who made the hit film Strictly Ballroom : director Baz Luhrmann and designers Catherine Martin and Bill Marron. Sung in Italian with English supertitles. Bold and unconventional, this fresh take is itself a bohemian work of art: experimental, nonconforming, original. From there, the opera plays scene by scene until the beginning, with its four starving artists preserved in eternal youth and dusted with the blush of love. Set in 19th-century Paris, our curtain rises on the final act of Puccini’s masterpiece.

Times)-reimagines La bohème, taking us from devastation to hope, from loneliness and despair to the greatest joy of life. What if life didn’t end in death, but in a return to love? In this rewinding of a tragic tale, Yuval Sharon-“the most innovative opera director in the United States” ( The New York

La boheme opera duration