Organization

Singer

Bass

Donald Maxwell

Alcindoro

Benoît

Soprano

Eleonora Buratto

Mimi

Lighting designer

Gil Wechsler

Costume designer

Sir Peter Hall

Set designer

Franco Zeffirelli

Stage director

Conductor

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

James Gaffigan

Suzanna Phillips

Leah Hawkins

Musetta

Latonia Moore

Tenor

Stephen Costello

Rodolfo

Charles Castronovo

Baritone

Davide Luciano

Marcello

Alexey Lavrov

Schaunard

Iurii Samoilov

Christian Van Horn

Colline

Krzysztof Bączyk

Philip Cokorinos

Quinn Kelsey

Paolo Carignani

Gregory Warren

Parpignol

Daniel Clark Smith

Tyler Simpson

A customs sergeant

Jonathan Scott

Ross Benoliel

A customs officer

Ned Hanlon

Juhwan Lee

A vendor

Steven Myles

Sylvia D'Eramo

The Metropolitan Opera

Orchestra

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

Others

Metropolitan Opera Choir

Italian

La Bohème

New York City

United States

Metropolitan Opera House

La bohème Puccini

Public

English

German

Spanish

Approved

La Bohème: Trailer

“The whole cast was strong,” raved The New York Times about our starry revival of Puccini’s La Bohème. Returning to the stage tonight, November 13, tenor Charles Castronovo and soprano Anita Hartig star as the bohemian lovers Rodolfo and Mimì, headlining Franco Zeffirelli’s passionate staging. Maestro Eun Sun Kim conducts.
Buy tickets: bit.ly/2Zx8O9b
Videography by Pete Scalzitti

Puccini's La Bohème

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Puccini’s timeless tragedy for the first time at the Met, leading soprano Eleonora Buratto and tenor Stephen Costello as the bohemian lovers Mimì and Rodolfo, and soprano Kristina Mkhitaryan and baritone Davide Luciano as the on-again-off-again Musetta and Marcello. Later in the run, James Gaffigan takes the podium to conduct a second exceptional cast in Franco Zeffirelli’s beloved staging, with sopranos Susanna Phillips and Latonia Moore, tenor Charles Castronovo, and baritone Quinn Kelsey.

World premiere: Teatro Regio, Turin, 1896. La Bohème, the passionate, timeless, and indelible story of love among young artists in Paris, can stake its claim as the world’s most popular opera. It has a marvelous ability to make a powerful first impression and to reveal unsuspected treasures after dozens of hearings. At first glance, La Bohème is the definitive depiction of the joys and sorrows of love and loss; on closer inspection, it reveals the deep emotional significance hidden in the trivial things—a bonnet, an old overcoat, a chance meeting with a neighbor—that make up our everyday lives.

Creators
Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) was immensely popular in his own lifetime, and his mature works remain staples in the repertory of most of the world’s opera companies. His librettists for La Bohème, Giuseppe Giacosa (1847–1906) and Luigi Illica (1857–1919), also collaborated with him on his next two operas, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. Giacosa, a dramatist, was responsible for the stories and Illica, a poet, worked primarily on the words themselves.
 
Setting 
The libretto sets the action in Paris, circa 1830. This is not a random setting, but rather reflects the issues and concerns of a particular time when, following the upheavals of revolution and war, French artists had lost their traditional support base of aristocracy and church. The story centers on self-conscious youth at odds with mainstream society—a Bohemian ambience that is clearly recognizable in any modern urban center. La Bohème captures this ethos in its earliest days.

Music
Lyrical and touchingly beautiful, the score of La Bohème exerts an immediate emotional pull. Many of its most memorable melodies are built incrementally, with small intervals between the notes that carry the listener with them on their lyrical path. This is a distinct contrast to the grand leaps and dives that earlier operas often depended on for emotional effect. La Bohème’s melodic structure perfectly captures the “small people” (as Puccini called them) of the drama and the details of everyday life.

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Ensemble