How does love illuminate you?
About the Story
Four friends (Rodolofo, Marcello, Schaunard and Colline) balance their lives between their artistic ambitions and realities of poverty without losing their good cheer. One winter’s night, a neighbourly meet-cute changes everything when Mimì meets Rodolfo and they fall instantly in love. Joined by singer Musetta, the friends and lovers celebrate everything that life has to offer them, including taking over the nearby Café Momus for a raucous evening. But it also becomes clear quickly that Mimì is ill. As the months progress, Rodolfo and Mimì struggle to preserve their love as life gets in the way. Musetta reunites with Marcello, only to confirm once more that their love is too tempestuous to last. Rodolfo, hoping Mimì might find someone who can better support her through her illness, breaks off their relationship. As spring arrives, Marcello, Rodolfo, Colline and Schaunard try to make light of their sorrow and hunger in a game of make-believe back in their garret apartment. Musetta arrives with a gravely ill Mimì, and the friends rush to pawn anything of value in order to afford her some measure of comfort in her darkest hour.
About the Music
Working in the verismo tradition of crafting operas that explore everyday people and the lives they live, Puccini and his librettists include the orchestra as a character throughout the work. Famous arias such as Rodolfo’s “Che gelida manina” (“What a cold little hand”) and Musetta’s “Quando m’en vo” (“When I go along”) move the story forward and also offer audiences an intimate look at the characters who sing them. Because the opera is through-composed, meaning it doesn’t stop between musical numbers, these “showstoppers” are intertwined with other music so that the story moves constantly, like a flowing river.
Opera Kelowna’s original production
Director Glynis Leyshon sets this production traditionally, in mid-1800s Paris, against a backdrop of café culture, bustling urban life, and social revolution always around the corner. The production explores lives lived with joy, artistry and meaning – even when precarity, poverty and illness cast ever bigger shadows. It is performed by an all-Canadian cast, with live orchestra, and sung in Italian with English subtitles provided.
