La Bohème

Lyrical scenes in four images (acts)

Giacomo Puccini

Laco Adamik
Tomasz Tokarczyk

Opera

Cyganeria

Sceny liryczne w czterech obrazach (aktach)

Giacomo Puccini

Laco Adamik
Tomasz Tokarczyk

composer – Giacomo Puccini

libretto – Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Henri Murger’s novel “Scènes de la vie de bohème”

World premiere – Turin, Teatro Regio, 1 February 1896

Polish premiere – Warsaw 1898

premiere at the Krakow Opera – 25 September 2015

Producers:

Director: Laco Adamik
Music Director: Tomasz Tokarczyk
Set and Costume Designer: Barbara Kędzierska
Chorus Master: Zygmunt Magiera
Lighting designer: Bogumił Palewicz
Children’s Choir Master: Marek Kluza

Director’s assistant: Agnieszka Sztencel, Bożena Walczyk-Skrzypczak
Music director’s assistant: Paweł Szczepański
Set and costume designer’s assistant: Izabela Firek
Chorus master’s assistant: Joanna Wójtowicz
Stage managers: Justyna Jarocka-Lejzak, Magdalena Wąsowska
Prompters: Krystyna Behounek, Dorota Sawka
Soloists’ coaches: Kristina Kutnik, Olga Tsymbaluk, Grzegorz Brajner
Chorus accompanist: Wioletta Fluda
Displayed libretto translated by Dorota Sawka

description

‘…freshness, youth, passion, cheerfulness, tears shed in silence, a love that gives you joy and makes you suffer,’ Puccini wrote about the perfect theme for an opera which he had found in Murger’s novel Scènes de la vie de bohème, which he himself could relate to through his own experience of several years spent as a student and artist at Milan’s conservatory. The duo of Giacosa and Illica magically turned the material into a superb libretto, not without some intervention of the composer himself. The latter endowed the tale of the Parisian bohemian life with a melodious phrase congenial with the situation, proving himself a master in building up the mood, inciting yearnings, and moving the audience. The residents of a poor garret are about to abandon their artsy spaces and walk into a life ruled by different laws. For now, however, they are experiencing  their first loves, and the first complications that come with them, as well as the first misfortunes in their lives, including death, which forebodes the end of their beautiful amusements, the end of carefree times, and thus a goodbye to youth. But let us not ponder on this yet, let us forget all about it and let ourselves be overtaken by the joyful mood of Musetta’s waltz, or the enticing words of the main heroine, ‘Si, mi chiamano Mimi’(‘Yes, they call me Mimi’) and Rodolfo’s bold attempt at seduction, ‘Che gelida manina’ (‘What a cold hand’). We’ll be better off that way.

https://opera.krakow.pl/en/spectacles/la-boheme