We follow the lives of these young people as they struggle to make ends meet, flirt, fall in love, and break up – until the end, when the friends gather round to take care of the dying Mimi. But their tender romance is doomed, for Mimi is ill with consumption, and Rodolfo is too poor to help her. Meanwhile, Rodolfo meets the frail seamstress Mimi, and they fall passionately in love. Schaunard has some money from a gig and brings food, wine, and enough cash for a celebration at the lively Café Momus, where they inevitably run into Marcello’s on-again, off-again, girlfriend, the coquettish Musetta. Colline, a philosopher, and Schaunard, a musician, turn up.

Marcello, a painter, and Rodolfo, a poet, burn one of Rodolfo’s plays to keep warm. The opera opens on a freezing Christmas Eve in Paris. It’s a sparkling portrayal of the Bohemian life – la vie de bohème – that free-spirited, romantic counterculture of starving artists in freezing garrets, meeting life with plucky camaraderie, youthful derring-do, plenty of love-making and heartbreak – and occasionally some work on their art. 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.Unlike many of Puccini’s operas, La bohème is named not for a girl, but for an almost mythical place – a time of life, a state of the heart. 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 length