La bohème

Long Live the bohemian life 

At all times, young people have lived as if they were immortal. Step into the bohemians’ timeless world – in R. B. Schlather’s new take on Puccini’s classic. 

We meet the young poet Rodolfo and his neighbour Mimì, who fall in love at first sight. Along with their friends Marcello, Colline and Schaunard, they live the bohemian life on the margins of society. Through art, friendship and infatuation, they create a space where reality is kept at bay. 

But the canvas cannot be painted over. Mimì is gravely ill. 

An immortal classic 
 

«People die and governments change, but the music of La bohème will live forever.» So wrote the inventor Thomas Edison to composer Giacomo Puccini. In La bohème, Puccini lets the music breathe and live with the characters onstage – in the long musical lines of «O soave fanciulla», where Mimì and Rodolfo fall in love and time almost stands still, in Musetta’s lightly strolling waltz «Quando me’n vo’», and in the deafening silence when breath fades and death arrives. 
 

The role of Mimì is shared by Victoria Randem and Ruzan Mantashyan. 
 

When Victoria Randem last sang the title role in Stefan Herheim’s The Cunning Little Vixen, the critics responded with standing ovations – and a Hedda Award for Best Musical Theatre Performance. She has previously sung Musetta in La bohème at the Staatsoper Berlin – and now appears as Mimì for the first time. 

Andrei Danilov and Carlos Cardoso alternate as Rodolfo.

Episodic escapism 

The opera is based on Henri Murger’s stories Scènes de la vie de bohème (1845–49). It is particularly the episodic structure of Murger’s depictions of young artists in Paris that has inspired Schlather’s staging.

Puccini completed the score in 1895, and the opera premiered the following year in Turin. It was conducted by Arturo Toscanini – who would later become one of the world’s most renowned conductors.