La Bohème

Giacomo Puccini's bittersweet opera of high-spirited bohemians and the doomed love between Rodolfo, the idealistic poet and Mimi, the consumptive flower-maker, is a beautifully balanced series of tableaux depicting the infectious joie de vivre of youth and the tragic waste of disease and separation. The legendary and incomparable partnership of Mirella Freni and Luciano Pavarotti as the two lovers has been captured in this special live recording from stage of the San Francisco Opera. Brian Large has adapted Francesca Zambello's production for video, further illuminating the fascinating interaction of Puccini's characters. Gino Quilico sings Marcello, the colorful and moody painter, whose tempestuous relationship with the flirtatious Musetta (sung by Sandra Pacetti), comically mirrors the more profound love of Rodolfo and Mimi. Nicolai Ghiaurov sings Colline.

"La Bohème" is one of Giacomo Puccini's most popular and timeless works and the second-most performed opera at New York's Metropolitan Opera. This production, directed by the legendary Franco Zeffirelli, features José Carreras, Teresa Stratas, Renata Scotto and Richard Stilwell. The opera is replete with extraordinary visual beauty as it presents the tragic story of young bohemians struggling to make it in the world.

Puccini’s evergreen paean to young love and the bohemian life has captivated generations of Met-goers through Franco Zeffirelli’s iconic production. Movie theater audiences for the high-definition transmission of this staging got to see it with fresh eyes in a touching performance starring Angela Gheorghiu and Ramón Vargas as the frail seamstress and her poetic lover.

It is 1830 in Paris and the rent is due, but the money is not there. An article here, a painting there and a monkey with a cup gives them enough money for the rent, but not for food. Fortunately, Musette from downstairs has enough food for everyone including Mimi - the poor little waif from next door who Rodolphe has met. But Count Paul also has his lusting eye on Mimi and uses her embroidery to get close to her. Rodolphe and Mimi fall in love and Mimi works endlessly to support Rodolphe who is writing his play with a new found passion. He does not know that he has been discharged from writing for 'Dog and Cat Fanciers'. Mimi wants to get his play produced and Count Paul offers to help, but there is a terrible fight when Rodolphe thinks that Mimi is faithless to him with Count Paul. After the fight, he seeks out a doctor as she is sick, but she has left when Rodolphe returns and will stay away until his play is finished.

John Copley's enduring production of one of the most famously melodious and popular of all operas is a classic of the Royal Opera repertory. With historically accurate designs by Julia Trevelyan Oman and an excellent cast headed by Hibla Gerzmava and Teodor Ilincai, this 2009 revival, in which conductor Andris Nelsons makes a distinguished Royal Opera House debut, does full justice to Puccini's masterpiece. Recorded 2009.

No one better described the half-starved, struggling artists than Murger in his Scènes de la Vie de Bohème: artists ready to burn a manuscript to try to keep warm yet,in an era of triumphant bourgeois materialism, dreaming of another existence. Taking up these scenes of Bohemian life, Puccini offers us a heart-breaking love story and some of the most beautiful music in the history of opera in the story of the poet Rodolfo and fragile Mimi. The staging of this new production has been entrusted to Claus Guth who sets the drama in a future devoid of hope in which love and art become the sole means of transcendence.

Graham Vick devises a version of La Bohème set in modern-day Athens, transporting Puccini’s beloved opera from 19th century Paris to 21st century Exarchia. The faces of the four ambitious young artists and their camaraderie are known to all. Their problems, concerns, jokes were run of the mill back then; they remain so even today. Rodolfo’s ill-fated love for Mimi assumes an unexpected tragic dimension given that their tale could be played out in the apartment right next door; right among us.

Puccini's masterpiece La Bohème is by far the most represented opera in the world. At the famous Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago (2014), where Puccini composed his main operas, La Bohème is directed by one of Italy’s greatest film directors: Ettore Scola, the creator of a high number of award-winning seminal films. As he explains in the programme notes, as soon as he was approached to stage La Bohème he had to fight hard to resist the temptation to give life to his “revolutionary” ideas; in the end, he decided for a traditional looking, rich, grandiose and detailed Bohème. Together with the exceptional cast of Daniela Dessì, Fabio Armiliato, Alessandro Luongo, Marco Spotti and Alida Berti, this production makes for an incomparable great performance.

“La Bohème” follows a group of artists struggling to make a living in 19th-century Paris. The poet Rodolfo falls in love with the fragile seamstress Mimi. Love and joy are intertwined with poverty and illness in this story filmed live.

Puccini’s timeless love story, which includes some of its composer’s most beloved music, has moved generations of opera lovers since its 1896 world premiere. It has also proved incredibly popular with the Met’s global HD audiences and has been featured in three live high-definition transmissions since 2008. The most recent, presented during the 2017–18 season, includes a cast of celebrated young artists. Soprano Sonya Yoncheva is the fragile seamstress Mimì, who instantly falls in love with the passionate poet Rodolfo, sung by tenor Michael Fabiano. Soprano Susanna Phillips and baritone Lucas Meachem trade both spars and kisses as the on-again-off-again lovers Musetta and Marcello, with bass Matthew Rose and baritone Alexey Lavrov rounding out the rambunctious gang of bohemian friends. Maestro Marco Armiliato takes the podium to lead Franco Zeffirelli’s picturesque staging.

Giacomo Puccini's immortal opera, in a high budget feature-film version directed by Academy Award nominee Robert Dornhelm, stars opera's 'Golden Couple', Rolando Villazon and Anna Netrebko as the protagonists, Rodolfo and Mimi. The chemistry between them is electric, unrivalled in the theatre today. Russian soprano Anna Netrebko is not only beautiful but has a marvelous voice and technique; Mexican tenor Rolando Villazon, has a wonderful voice and an incredible charisma. The director not only wanted to remain steadfastly faithful to Puccini's design but also document two of the leading singers of the modern age rather than embarking on a 'trendy' contemporary re-creation.

Three penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no visa, Marcel, a playwright and magazine editor with no publisher, and Schaunard, a post-modernist composer of execrable noise.

In the 50's, in Paris, the neighbors Rodolfo and Mimi meet each other when Mimi's candle blows out in a cold and dark night. They immediately fall in love for each other, in times of financial difficulties in the post-war. Rodolfo introduces Mimi to his close friends Marcello and his beloved Musetta; Colline; and Schaunard and together they have a good-time in Café Momus. Some time later, Mimi tells Marcello that she can not support the jealousy of Rodolfo any longer and when Marcello discuss with Rodolfo, Mimi overhears the real reason for the behavior of her beloved Rodolfo.

The film tells the story of a love affair between a poor poet and an equally poor seamstress in 19th century Paris.

Live performance of Puccini's opera at the Salzburg Festival in Austria. Piotr Beczala stars as Rodolfo with Anna Netrebko as Mimi, Massimo Cavalletti as Marcello and Nino Machaidze as Musetta. Daniele Gatti conducts the Vienna Philharmonic, the Vienna State Opera Chorus and the Salzburg Festival and Theatre Children's Choir.

Madrid's legendary Teatro Real staged this production of Giacomo Puccini's seminal opera La Bohème, starring Inva Mula, Aquiles Machado and Jesús López Cobos in the principal roles. Giancarlo del Monaco directed for the stage, Michael Scott designed the sets and costumes, and The Chorus and Orchestra of the Teatro Real provide musical accompaniment.

In the early 1960s two artistic giants, conductor Herbert von Karajan and director Franco Zeffirelli, joined forces to create this milestone production of Puccini’s masterpiece at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala. Filmed in that legendary opera house in 1965, with Zeffireli himself directing for the cameras, this “Bohème” has been acclaimed universally for its unique theatrical impact and visual splendour. Starring the young Mirella Freni in her carreer-making performance. – For the first time the full dimension of opera on film.

The striking and brutal realities of the students struggling for food, shelter and medication. Mimi's death from TB - and her illness unnoticed at first even by her closest friends - cannot but send a chilling chord in our modern world.

A new generation of rising stars shines in Franco Zeffirelli’s classic production of Puccini’s most popular opera. Vittorio Grigolo is the poor poet Rodolfo who falls head over heels for his neighbor, the seamstress Mimì, sung by the radiant Kristine Opolais. Susanna Phillips is the flirtatious Musetta, Massimo Cavaletti is her sweetheart Marcello, and Patrick Carfizzi as Schaunard and Oren Gradus as Colline complete the ensemble. Stefano Ranzani conducts.