Bernd Uhlig / OnP

Opera

La Bohème

Giacomo Puccini

Opéra Bastille

from 02 May to 04 June 2023

2h30 with 1 interval

La Bohème

Opéra Bastille - from 02 May to 04 June 2023

Synopsis

Was it because the writer Henry Murger had himself known such a life during his youth? That would explain the veracity with which, in his Scènes de la vie de bohème, he depicts those half‑starved, struggling artists, ready to burn their manuscripts for a bit of warmth whilst, in an age of triumphant bourgeois materialism, they dream of another life. Taking up these scenes, Giacomo Puccini offers us the heart‑breaking story of the poet, Rodolfo, and the fragile Mimi, and some of the most beautiful pages in the repertoire. The director, Claus Guth, sets their broken love affair in space, creating a universe in which the past resurges in the form of hallucinatory flashbacks. In this surprising setting, Puccini’s music resounds sublimely, highlighting the very essence of the work: memory as the thread that attaches us to life.

Duration : 2h30 with 1 interval

Language : Italian

Surtitle : French / English

  • Opening

  • First part 60 min

  • Intermission 30 min

  • Second part 60 min

  • End

Show acts

Detail of acts

Act 1
Day 126 – 40°45’53’’N 74 – Expedition in danger – off course – engines inoperative – life-support resources almost exhausted – we are working without respite – time is running out – water is rationed – life depends on the last reserves of oxygen – a constant struggle with the darkness and the cold – each day increasingly difficult – last remnants of humour – using our imagination – to evoke times long past.
Rodolfo, Marcello, Schaunard and Colline. The atmosphere is morose. It is cold and there is practically nothing left to eat. Nevertheless, Schaunard manages to finds a few scraps. Meanwhile, in a stream of words, everyone starts to reminisce and evoke memories of better times. The four friends, having regained a degree of good humour, recall an evening spent in their favourite café in the Latin Quarter. When they evoke Benoît, their former landlord, the latter suddenly appears. They strike up a conversation with him, and then he vanishes as suddenly as he appeared. Colline, Schaunard and Marcello leave Rodolfo alone for a moment. Mimi appears, in the clutches of a coughing fit... Their hands touch in the darkness... They draw closer. Rodolfo asks Mimi to stay with him.

Act 2
Day 129 – 41°43’63’’N 54 – Situation hopeless – time fluctuates between states of sleep and wakefulness – Mimi has returned – in the space capsule reality begins to blur – delirium takes root – Mimi, always Mimi – like a spectral dream – dreaming soemtimes transports us back into our past – the happiest times of our lives are revived – moments of exuberance and ecstasy.
Rodolfo and Marcello are overwhelmed by a variety of physical sensations: the crowds of people, the colours and smells of the street. The atmosphere of the city takes over the entire space. They find themselves in their favourite café in the company of Mimi, Colline and Schaunard. In an atmosphere brimming with euphoria, Rodolfo, very much in love with Mimi, buys her a bonnet. Musetta, Marcello’s one-time mistress, arrives accompanied by her new lover Alcindoro. Marcello falls under her spell and can no longer take his eyes off the vision. She makes Alcindoro pay the bill and comes back to Marcello. Just then, an annoying military

Act 3
Day 132 – 45°47’73’’N 57 – Impossible to continue the voyage – forced landing – our last refuge is lost – attempts to make contact unsuccessful – giant heaps of dust everywhere – dense fog – every outline is blurred – we are at the mercy of the emptiness – our days are numbered – Mimi... – if only I could touch her face again one more time...
Time has passed. The cold, the snow, the emptiness and the isolation take hold over everything. In the distance, we can hear the customs officers inspecting the farmers and the dairy maids. One by one, we catch sight of familiar faces. Mimi arrives. She confides in Marcello: Rodolfo’s jealousy is making her life a living hell. Rodolfo in turn confides in Marcello and reveals the truth to him: Mimi is suffering from tuberculosis and is very ill. He knows that he can only offer her wretched living conditions, and that if they stay together she will die. Overwhelmed by her suffering, he decides to leave her. The two separate but the memory of happier days endures.

Act 4
Day 159 – 46°77’75’’N 69 – The end – where are we? – No more contact – Death has reared its head – Schaunard and Colline have already lost the fight – solitude is total – acceptance of the situation – I am extremely calm – feverish delusions – nightmares – my life flashes by in isolated images as if on a stage – there is little time left – but Mimi is still here.
Once again, time has passed. Marcello and Rodolfo, trying to overcome their grief in order to continue living, are possessed by the idea of love, women, good food, and the joys of life. Schaunard and Colline appear and everyone engages in a grotesque game: they improvise, vent their passions, fight and then enjoy a sumptuous meal: a bottle of water becomes champagne, a herring is transformed into an exquisite fish. Musetta then reappears with a dying Mimi. Distressed, the others decide to leave Rodolfo and Mimi alone. They reminisce about their first encounter, the happy times they spent together, and promise never to leave each other again. But Rodolfo must let Mimi go… he is alone.

Artists

Opera in four acts (1896)

After Henry Murger, Scènes de la vie de bohème

Creative team

Cast

Orchestre et Choeurs de l’Opéra national de Paris
Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine / Choeur d’enfants de l’Opéra national de Paris

Media

[TRAILER] LA BOHÈME by Giacomo Puccini
[TRAILER] LA BOHÈME by Giacomo Puccini
  • Draw-me La Bohème

    Draw-me La Bohème

    Watch the video

  • The Opera is showing off: La Bohème

    The Opera is showing off: La Bohème

    Read the article

  • La Bohème goes into orbit

    La Bohème goes into orbit

    Watch the video

  • The Bohemian Spirit

    The Bohemian Spirit

    Read the article

© Matthieu Pajot / OnP

Draw-me La Bohème

Watch the video

Understand the plot in 1 minute

1:36 min

Draw-me La Bohème

By Matthieu Pajot

© Tom Vaillant

The Opera is showing off: La Bohème

Read the article

When illustrators interpret the19/20 Season their way

01 min

The Opera is showing off: La Bohème

By Tom Vaillant

Octave gives free reins to some illustrators to portray their way the 19/20 Season, by revisiting one show poster of their choice. Tom Vaillant decided to illustrate the opera La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini.
© Tom Vaillant

© Guergana Damianova / OnP

La Bohème goes into orbit

Watch the video

Interview with Ailyn Pérez, Sandra Westphal and Nicolas Beaud

01 min

La Bohème goes into orbit

By Isabelle Stibbe

Encounter with soprano Ailyn Pérez who talks about her role as Mimi, vocal coach Sandra Westphal who analyses the story of La Bohème, and Nicolas Beaud, head of the Bastille Lighting Department, who talks about the LEDs installed in a spectacular piece of scenery: the space shuttle.  

© Sotheby's / AKG images

The Bohemian Spirit

Read the article

Henri Murger's little-known masterpiece

06 min

The Bohemian Spirit

By Tristan Bera

On the occasion of Claus Guth’s futuristic production for the Paris Opera, we turn back to Scènes de la vie de bohème, the little-known work by Henri Murger that inspired Puccini to write one of his most beautiful operas.    


Appearing first in serial form in 1845 in Le Corsaire Satan, then performed at the Théâtre des Variétés in 1849, Scènes de la vie de bohème became a novel in 1851 at the instigation of the publisher Michel Lévy, only too pleased to prolong the commercial success of the play, and with the agreement of its author, equally delighted to sign a new contract ensuring, in the short term at least, some additional income. Like his characters - Rodolphe the poet, Schaunard the musician or Marcel the painter, Henri Murger was himself bohemian.

It was directly from incidents in his own existence that Murger drew the raw materials for his novel, thus making his opus an example of auto-fiction before the time. The motherless son of a tailor, self-taught, a poor Latin scholar though hardworking and not without talent, he worked first as a painter and a poet before frequenting the publishing houses where, in the mid-nineteenth century, business was booming (Balzac’s Illusions perdues comes to mind) and devoting his time to prose. On the advice of a journalist friend, with a view to launching his career and in a flight of literary fancy, he changed his name to Henry Mürger, anglicizing his first name and germanising his surname. In 1841, he founded the Buveurs d’eau (the Water-drinkers), an informal collective for artists with Romantic ideals, with headquarters in the Nouvelle-Athènes neighbourhood in Paris, in the Rue de la Tour-d’Auvergne, to be precise. The name of this association, which was dedicated to mutual assistance and solidarity among penniless artists in want of patronage, originated in the fact that they generally met over a carafe of water. The chapter entitled “L’Ecu de Charlemagne” in the novel is a thinly veiled transcription of those meetings – gatherings improvised in a garret by candlelight during which a succession of performances, recitals and readings were given with unavoidable economy of means. Within the cenacle of bohemian life, poverty rubbed shoulders with the most poetic spirit of invention.    

Henri Murger (1822 – 1861)
Henri Murger (1822 – 1861) © AKG images / Imagno / Pierre Petit

So what does bohemian life really refer to? Besides being an auto-fiction, the novel is also a vivid sociological portrait of a particular fringe community within the population of Paris. Indeed, “Bohemian life only exists and is only possible in Paris”. The term was not actually invented by Murger, it can be traced back to 1830. Deriving from Bohemia, an area in central Europe, and designating a Romany or Gipsy nomadic traveller, the term took on new significance in the work of Balzac who modified its spelling by adding an accent to make bohème rhyme with poème, and used it to qualify a marginal type relegated to society’s side lines for its classless, transgressional or even monstrous character. Unknown or rather, unrecognised Parisian artists, became the bohemians of the period and figures of the media society that the newspapers, magazines and other press organs were in the process of founding. In 1837, George Sand, who contributed to the creation of the romantic myth surrounding the Nouvelle-Athènes neighbourhood, stated in La Dernière Aldini, “Vive la bohème!” Why did Paris house such a concentration of bohemians? A major nineteenth-century capital, the Ville Lumière was the ultimate cultural metropolis where not only provincials but also foreigners converged to try their luck. In the midst of industrial transformation and the crystallisation of the capitalist system, Paris was to undergo an initial, and unprecedented, inflation of its cultural life in relation to the local demand. As a result, the well-known law of supply and demand condemned an entire population of artists to temporary or endless poverty. La bohème is a road with three lanes (the garret, the café and the street) that leads either to glory or to the gutter.

Murger, in the wake of such illustrious pioneers, and as a genuine insider, becomes the chronicler of the milieu, “the common historian of the bohemian saga.” Combining lyrical, epic, tragic, ironic and pathetic registers, the preface to the novel is, so to speak, the phenomenon’s founding text, as it definitively consecrates the terminology and the definition: “La bohème is an apprenticeship for artistic life; It is the preface to the Academy, the hospice or the morgue”. The heterogeneity of Murger’s phraseology, varying from romantic parody to social realism, from academic or aristocratic culture to popular culture, makes the work eminently contemporary. Although the use of a vernacular bearing the hallmark of the 1830s requires the odd footnote, the miserably precarious situations faced by the artists and the sparkling resourcefulness with which they survive them, seem to have remained resolutely timeless ever since the emergence of the media society.    

Rodolfo et Mimi, Marcello et Musetta dans la rue (acte III). Série d’illustrations pour La Bohème, Puccini, 1905
Rodolfo et Mimi, Marcello et Musetta dans la rue (acte III). Série d’illustrations pour La Bohème, Puccini, 1905 © AKG images

The success of Murger’s play is undeniable. Indeed, in 1849, the Prince-President, the future Napoleon III, even attended the first performance. In spite of everything, the novel, still not widely read, and the name of its creator, who died in penury at the age of thirty-nine, have not attained equal glory. Giacomo Puccini’s opera was performed for the first time in Paris in 1898 at the Opéra-Comique, in French, under the title La Vie de bohème. Today, the libretto, inspired by the theatrical version of Scenes and written by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, has eclipsed the literary work and become the focus of all critical and literary acclaim. However, it has tended to simplify the plot of the novel which, in describing bohemian life episodically, sketched an artistic map of Paris that was absolutely new and radical. Even more than the bildungsroman or coming-of-age novels of Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant and Zola, or the anthologies and destinies of the poètes maudits, Murger’s book is a vade-mecum: essential reading for any artist starting out in a metropolis because it is addressed to those “who enter the arts, with no other means of existence than art itself”. La bohème is an obligatory rite of passage.

  • [EXTRAIT] LA BOHÈME de Giacomo Puccini (Slávka Zámečníková)
  • [EXTRAIT] LA BOHÈME de Giacomo Puccini (Ailyn Pérez)
  • [EXTRAIT] LA BOHÈME de Giacomo Puccini (Ailyn Pérez & Joshua Guerrero)
  • La Bohème (saison 22/23) - Acte 3 (Donde Lieta)

  • La Bohème (saison 22/23) - Acte 2 (Sola Mi Fo)

  • La Bohème (saison 22/23) - Acte 3 (Quando M'en Vo Soletta)

  • La Bohème (saison 22/23) - acte 4 (C'è Mimi)

Access and services

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

Book your parking spot
  • Cloakrooms

    Free cloakrooms are at your disposal. The comprehensive list of prohibited items is available here.

  • Bars

    Reservation of drinks and light refreshments for the intervals is possible online up to 24 hours prior to your visit, or at the bars before each performance.

  • Boutiques

    A selection of works items are available on our various boutiques: Online store and The Opéra Bastille Shop.

    LEARN MORE.

  • Last-minute tickets

    Special reduced rates for people under the age of 28, unemployed and seniors over 65 are available. 

    LEARN MORE.

  • Parking

    You can park your car at the Q-Park Opéra Bastille. It is located at 34 rue de Lyon, 75012 Paris. 

    BOOK YOUR PARKING PLACE.

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

Book your parking spot
  • Cloakrooms

    Free cloakrooms are at your disposal. The comprehensive list of prohibited items is available here.

  • Bars

    Reservation of drinks and light refreshments for the intervals is possible online up to 24 hours prior to your visit, or at the bars before each performance.

  • Boutiques

    A selection of works items are available on our various boutiques: Online store and The Opéra Bastille Shop.

    LEARN MORE.

  • Last-minute tickets

    Special reduced rates for people under the age of 28, unemployed and seniors over 65 are available. 

    LEARN MORE.

  • Parking

    You can park your car at the Q-Park Opéra Bastille. It is located at 34 rue de Lyon, 75012 Paris. 

    BOOK YOUR PARKING PLACE.

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

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