With the premiere of the opera La Bohème the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb joins European theaters in commemorating the centenary of the death of Giacomo Puccini.
Libretto by Illica and Giacosa based on Murger
La Bohème, the famous opera of the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, situated in the Latin quarter of Paris in the 1840s, brings us a tragic story of young artists, bohemians, grisettes and their love affairs. After the novel and drama of the French writer Henry Murger Scenes of Bohemian Life, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa wrote the libretto for Puccini's opera. Puccini, the master of orchestration, virtuosity and of depicting human emotions, with different music described two large opera loves, one gentle, stable and tragic love of the poet Rodolfo and seamstress Mimì and one totally opposite, passionate and stormy love of painter Marcello and Musette. At the beginning we follow the young artists on the brink of starvation who are on their way to the café, but a chance encounter with the gentle neighbour stops one of them and this sets off a series of events that end tragically. After the flop at the world opening night, Puccini's opera with every new performance achieved success and gained more and more fans, while today it is an inevitable and adored work of every opera theatre. Along the famous arias and duets of Rodolfo and Mimì in which they tell their life stories to each other, and the popular seductive aria of Musette, Puccini offers and opera full of youthful freshness and charm that in its gentleness collapses under poverty and timeless suffering of young Parisian artists and their pure and true loves. The conductor is Pier Giorgio Morandi and the stage director Mario Pontiggia.
