Organization

Treble Chorus Master

Gino Tanasini

Singer

Soprano

Anastasia Bartoli

Mimi

Serena Gamberoni

Tenor

Galeano Salas

Rodolfo

Alessandro Scotto di Luzio

Baritone

Alessio Arduini

Marcello

Leon Kim

Benedetta Torre

Musetta

Bass

Gabriele Sagona

Colline

Pablo Ruiz

Schaunard

Fernando Cisneros

Matteo Peirone

Benoît

Alcindoro

Teatro Carlo Felice

Orchestra

Orchestra del Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova

Others

Chorus of Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova

Luca Dall'Amico

Repetiteur

Riccardo Minasi

Giampiero De Paoli

Parpignol

Alberto Angeleri

Claudio Isoardi

A vendor

Antonio Mannarino

Franco Rios Castro

A customs sergeant

Loris Purpura

A customs officer

Maria Novella Malfatti

Stage director

Augusto Fornari

Conductor

Andrea Francesco Solinas

Lighting designer

Luciano Novelli

Costume designer

Francesco Musante

Set designer

Chorus master

Claudio Marino Moretti

La Bohème

Genoa

Italy

La Bohème Puccini

Private

Public

Approved

LA BOHÈME
Riccardo Minasi alla direzione dell’Orchestra e del Coro dell’Opera Carlo Felice nell’intramontabile opera di Puccini
Scene liriche in quattro quadri di Giacomo Puccini
su libretto di Luigi Illica e Giuseppe Giacosa,
dal romanzo Scènes de la vie de Bohème di Henri Murger

italiano

The genesis of La Bohème began almost as a challenge between two of the most acclaimed opera composers of the late 19th century: Ruggero Leoncavallo and Giacomo Puccini. Both wanted to write an opera based on the novel Scènes de la vie de bohème, by Henri Murger, published in serial form between 1845 and 1848 and finally freed from copyright. Puccini began work on his Bohème in 1893, together with librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (with whom he had already worked on his first success, Manon Lescaut). Two years of work on the libretto, divided into four pictures, were followed by about eight months to finalise the score. Puccini’s La bohème was performed on 1 February 1896 at the Teatro Regio in Turin, conducted by a young Arturo Toscanini, and given the enormous success, the opera of the same name by the ‘rival’ Leoncavallo, which premiered in May 1897, was soon forgotten. Puccini later introduced a few variations, so that in the months following the première he arrived at a highly acclaimed final version – the one that is widespread today.

Dramaturgy
One of the most appealing aspects of the Bohème is its setting: Paris in the 1830s, one of the most vibrant and stimulating cities in Europe, with its nascent bohemian culture or subculture, made up of easygoing artists, mostly poor, but united in sharing a dream of aesthetics, ideals and avant-garde. The protagonists of La Bohème embody this lifestyle: Rodolfo is a poet – but he also writes newspaper articles to make ends meet; similarly, the painter Marcello supplements his income by working as a portrait painter in a tavern. Colline, the philosopher, is in a sense a parody of himself, when instead of reflecting on the meaning of existence, he shows up in a huff for the Christmas closing of the pawnshop. The group is completed by a musician, Schaunard, who is not given an equally fine characterisation (in Murger’s novel, the musician is Rodolfo, perhaps Puccini attributed the art of poetry to his protagonist to ward off autobiographical interpretations of the opera). The two female characters are antithetical, and they in turn know the hardships of a poor life: Mimì lives alone in an attic, next to bohemians, and embroiders flowers; Musetta leads a dissolute life, going from one wealthy lover to another (her most sincere love is Marcello). Alongside them, a diverse and multifaceted human cast of students, bourgeoisie, shopkeepers, street vendors, waiters and seamstresses bustle through the streets of Paris. The only antagonist is the ominous omen that haunts the protagonists: disillusionment, the subtle and ill-concealed awareness that art and ideals will not save them. Relationships – fraternal friendships, overwhelming and complicated loves – are depicted in their moving complexity and in a tireless alternation between the dimension of playfulness and carefreeness and the dimension of despair. Mimì and Rodolfo fall in love as two young boys might fall in love, but from the start her illness looms large, and both can only pretend their happiness, until the ending falls apart in their hands. Marcello and Musetta give in to passion, aware from the first moment of their deep incompatibility and of the imminent and painful end. The union of the four friends is based on goliardia, all of them taking part in a play, for themselves and for others, in order to hide the most lacerating and unconfessed fear: will the world leave them marginalised forever? One of the most emblematic moments of the contrast between the two dimensions is the finale of the third painting, when Mimì and Rodolfo openly confront their relationship problems. They know that their story has come to an end and once again they pretend: leaving in winter is cruel, ‘We will leave each other in the season of flowers’.

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