Cast
Mimi : Cristina Gallardo-Domâs
Musetta : Hei-Kyung Hong
Rodolfo : Marcelo lvarez
Marcello : Roberto Servile
Schaunard : Natale de Carolis
Colline : Giovanni Battista Parodi
Benoit : Matteo Peirone
Alcindoro : Angelo Romero
Parpignol : Alberto Fraschina
Ernesto Panariello, Tino Nava, Antonio Novello

La Scala Orchestra and Chrous
Bruno Bartoletti (conductor)

Stage Director
Franco Zeffirelli

Puccini's opera favourite was completed in 1896. The libretto was by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, based on the novel Scènes de la vie bohème by Henri Murger. It was first performed in Turin on 1 Feb 1896.

Its realism was something fairly new in opera. It dealt not in historical grand tales of passion in high society, as one might expect in Verdi, but in very down-to-earth situations. Bohème is a picture of bohemian life in Paris of the turn of the century: penniless aspiring artists and sweatshop workers living in cheap, damp city flats. Essentially, it is the love story between budding poet Rodolfo and seamstress Mimi, after they bump into each other on the stairs of their crowded apartment; a doomed love story of course, as we watch Mimi's tragic demise from tuberculosis. The song Rodolfo sings in that stairwell meeting in the dark - Che gelida manina, "What a cold little hand", is typical Puccini: a tender, tear-jerking melody echoed by a heartbreaking string line.

This production is a revival of Franco Zeffirelli's, staged at La Scala in 2003. Outstanding Argentinian tenor Marcelo Alvarez - familiar to Sky Arts viewers from many other programmes - is Rodolfo.