In the cold of winter, an exuberant poet lives in poverty with his three bohemian flatmates. His heart is warmed when he falls in love with his fragile neighbour, but then her illness takes a turn for the worse. The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai presents this innovative semi-staged production of Puccini’s beloved opera. Carlo Rizzi conducts the lush score, which is interspersed with texts from Henri Murger’s original novel to tell the tale of the lives and loves of the young bohemian artists in the Latin quarter of Paris.
The Sacristan
Antonio
Benoît
The musical notes of this Puccini masterpiece provide the starting point and foundation for a new, highly successful collaboration between Riccardo Chailly and Davide Livermore. In their interpretation, there is “no moment, no movement, that goes against the musical meaning” (R. Chailly). The result is an energetic, authentic, and atmospherically strong Bohème, “in which every sacred phrase receives its own orchestral colour, its own dynamic and its own expression.” (Corriere della Sera)
Second Second Assistant Director
On July 19–21, 2001, over 200,000 people took to the streets of Genoa to protest against the ongoing G8 summit. Anti-globalization activists clashed with the police, with 23-year-old protester Carlo Giuliani shot dead after confronting a police vehicle. In the aftermath, the police organized a night raid on the Diaz high school, where a hundred unarmed people between protesters—mostly students—and independent reporters who documented the police brutality during the protests had took shelter. What happened next would be called by Amnesty International "the most serious breach of civil liberties in a democratic Western country since World War II."
