Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème, with its wonderful music, is one of the great opera classics. Join us in New York of the 1960s in a gripping and colorful story about love, friendship, dreams, decadence, passion, and pop art.
The artist quarters in SoHo are bursting with creativity and decadence. Here, you'll find the latest in fashion, art, theater, music, literature, poetry, and film. New art forms emerge, everything is possible, and freedom is absolute.
Plot
Six young bohemians live in a collective in an old industrial space that they use as a studio. They are completely dedicated to their art and dream of making it big. However, no one has rentmoney, and now, during the Christmas season, the space is completely frozen. When the rock musician Schaunard comes home with money from a gig, the friends go out to celebrate at a café.
The poet Rodolfo lingers behind. There is a power outage, and the lone wolf Mimì, a textile artist, comes down from upstairs to light a candle. They fall head over heels in love and venture out together into the lively and bustling streets.
At the café, they meet the rest of the gang. The curator Musetta shows up with her sugar daddy Alcindoro, an older wealthy man who helps with her gallery. Somehow, she manages to get rid of Alcindoro and make him pay the entire bill. She leaves the café with her ex-boyfriend, the artist Marcello.
But reality soon catches up with the friends. None of the couples can stay together, everyone is equally poor and freezing, it's not easy to make it big, and soon it becomes clear that Mimì is suffering from a deadly disease...
Puccini's masterpiece
Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème is one of the most beloved and performed operas. The libretto is based on Henry Murger's novel Scènes de la vie de Bohème (Scenes of Bohemian Life). Both Puccini and Murger had their own experiences of living a bohemian life as poor students with artistic dreams. The opera originally takes place, like the novel, in 19th-century Paris.
Puccini wanted his opera to have "as much singing, as much melody as possible." And he certainly succeeded. Beautiful melodies follow one another, describing all imaginable emotions that go straight into the hearts of the audience.