La Bohème
Scenes of Henri Murger's »La vie de Bohème«
in four acts by Giacomo Puccini
Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
German text version by Bettina Bartz and Werner Hintze
Saturday, 25.02.2012, 19:30
1 hour 40 minutes (without intermission)
Introduction ... 30 minutes before the beginning of the performance, Foyer
Debut performance 1896 - Premiere on 6 April 2008
Who hasn't dreamt of living the life of a true bohemian? Young and poor, but free and happy. To be free and without responsibility, far away from order and regulations, to live just for the moment, but always for the arts, with endless amours and the café as a headquarter – and absolutely against all bourgeois conventions. This great dream of the mainstream bourgeois on the domestic sofa is inspired by Henri Murger's episodic novel »La vie de Bohème«, about the life of artists and students in the Paris Quartier Latin and, of course, above all from Puccini's world-renowned opera.
The »four musketeers«, the poet Rodolphe, the painter Marcel, the musician Schaunard and Colline, the philosopher, are true bohemians. They live from hand to mouth, they crow with esprit and charm over trivial tedium adversities, such as firewood scarceness or their narrow-minded landlord. It seems they are all blessed with perfect happiness, when Rodolphe and Mimi fall in love with each other on Christmas Eve and when the clever Musette sends her rich devotee away, to return once again to Marcel. However, months later, jealousy and misery exasperate the two unlike couples. Mimi is critically ill – Rodolphe is unable to help her. Only when the mortally ill Mimi returns to Rodolphe, the old bohemian community gets together again. But it is too late.
Murger's easy composed everyday life stories, »La vie de Bohème«, were published from 1845 as an episodic gazette novel. Fascinated by the soulful plot, Puccini composed his opera 50 years later: »There is humanity, there is sentiment, there is, heart. And there is above all poetry.« How Puccini's music, which is charged with emotions, raises everyday life to something exceptional, how he conjures with few compositional instruments a vividly atmosphere, and how he lets us indulge in extremely sensitive cantilenas, beguiles us still today.