Puccini La bohème
Sunday 10 November 2024 - 15 h
Wednesday 13 November 2024 - 20 h
Tuesday 19 November 2024 - 19 h (by invitation from the Palais)
Opera in four scenes
Music by Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)
Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica based on Henry Murger's Scènes de la vie de bohème (1849)
Premiere: Turin, Teatro Regio, 1 february 1896
Puccini Centenary Festival
Coproduction with the Royal Opera of Muscat, Oman
When Giacomo Puccini turned to Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, who had collaborated fruitfully with him on the libretto of Manon Lescaut shortly before, he struggled with turning into a convincing structure the Scènes de la vie de bohème, written 45 years earlier by the French literary realist Henry Murger (1822-1861). When the completed opera was finally premiered in Torino in 1896, it even received unfavourable reviews in spite of Toscanini’s conducting.
To us, the four short acts of La bohème feel well balanced, their mixture of lightness, exuberance, lyricism, true feeling and heart-rendering sadness perfect. The orchestral writing is colourful but always to the point, the sung parts conversationally natural but interspersed with some of the most memorable tunes in opera history. Today, we are still moved profoundly by the naive youthfulness of Puccini’s characters, who are doomed but blessed with short moments of innocent bliss.
These performances of La bohème will be interpreted by a glamorous cast headed by Anna Netrebko as Mimì.
Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo
Children's choir of the Académie de musique Rainier III
MAÎTRES D’ŒUVRE
Direction musicale
Marco Armiliato
Mise en scène
Jean-Louis Grinda
Assistante à la mise en scène
Vanessa d’Ayral de Sérignac
Décors
Rudy Sabounghi
Vidéos
Julien Soulier
Costumes
David Belugou
Lumières
Laurent Castaingt
Chef de chant
Kira Parfeevets
Chef de chœur
Stefano Visconti
SOLISTES
Mimi (8, 10, 13 Nov)
Anna Netrebko
Musetta (8, 10, 13 Nov.) & Mimi (19 Nov)
Nino Machaidze
Musetta (19 Nov)
Mariam Battistelli
Rodolfo
Yusif Eyvazov
Marcello
Florian Sempey
Schaunard
Biagio Pizzuti
Colline
Giorgi Manoshvili
Benoît
Fabrice Alibert
Alcindoro
Matteo Peirone
Parpignol
Vincenzo di Nocera
Un sergent
Vincenzo Cristofoli
Un douanier
Matthew Thistleton
Un vendeur ambulant
Walter Barbaria, Domenico Cappuccio & Thierry di Meo
FIGURATION
Yuliya Ustinov
Heathcliff Bonnet
Nicolas Vitale
Sophie Boursier
Julia Zolynski
Emmanouela Eleni Avgoustianou
Hind Yasmine Guefif
CHOEUR D’ENFANTS DE L’ACADEMIE DE MUSIQUE RAINIER III
Chef de chœur
Bruno Habert
Ophélie HABERT
Romane DUCHESNE
Sacha DUCHESNE
Agathe LANDAU
Virgile BLOCH
Chloé MACCHI
Grace GUERRERO
Alice Contaldo
Anastasia DE MARZIA
Arabella PIERRE
Mathilde GRINDA
Matteo SIMONETTI
Aurélien BILLY
Joeline KALBFLEISCH
Egon ROSTAGNI
Friederike ARMELIN
Samantha DIMEO
Cassiopea DIMEO
Léa GUILLERET
Maurice REVEST
Jude WARMUZ
Léana GAUDIO
Chloé CELLARIO
Justine LEBLANC
Inès BEAUVOIS
Anais GABELLA TARDITI
Soan DELAPORTE MARIETTE
Mai Li PEUCH
CHŒUR DE L’OPÉRA DE MONTE-CARLO
Chef de chœur
Stefano Visconti
Consultant pour l’organisation musicale & assistant chef de chœur
Aurelio Scotto
Régisseuse du chœur & bibliothécaire
Colette Audat
Sopranos I
Galia BAKALOV
Antonella CESARIO
Chiara IAIA
Giovanna MINNITI
Felicity MURPHY
Leslie Olga Visco
Mariia Komarova*
Biagia Puccio*
Erica Rondini*
Ronja Weyhenmeyer*
Sopranos II
Rossella ANTONACCI
Valérie MARRET
Letizia PIANIGIANI
Laura Maria ROMO CONTRERAS
VITTORIA GIACOBAZZI
Elena Rogova*
Mezzo-sopranos
Teresa BRAMWELL-DAVIES
Géraldine MELAC
Suma MELLANO
Federica SPATOLA
Francesca Bargellini*
Taisiya Korobetskaya*
Altos
ORNELLA CORVI
Maria-Elisabetta DE GIORGI
Catia PIZZI
Paola SCALTRITI
Rosa TORTORA
Tina Chikvinidze*
Alessandra Masini*
Ténors I
Walter BARBARIA
Lorenzo CALTAGIRONE
Domenico CAPPUCCIO
Vincenzo DI NOCERA
Thierry DIMEO
Nicolo LA FARCIOLA
Manfredo Meneghetti*
Andrea Civetta*
Ténors II
Davide Minoliti
Pasquale FERRARO
Fabio MARZI
Adolfo SCOTTO DI LUZIO
Salvatore TAIELLO
Marco Angelo Müller*
Barytons
Fabio BONAVITA
Vincenzo CRISTOFOLI
Kyle Patrick Sullivan
Przemyslaw Baranek
Nicolo Bartoli*
Armando Napoletano*
Basses
Stefano Arnaudo
Daniele Del Bue
Paolo MARCHINI
Edgardo RINALDI
Matthew THISTLETON
Eugenij Bogdanowicz*
Daniele Gabrieli*
*choristes supplémentaires pour les représentations de La bohème
ORCHESTRE PHILHARMONIQUE DE MONTE-CARLO
Directeur artistique et musical
KAZUKI YAMADA
Premiers violons
David Lefèvre
Liza Kerob
Sibylle Duchesne
Ilyoung Chae
Diana Mykhalevych
Gabriel Milito
Mitchell Huang
Thierry Bautz
Isabelle Josso
Morgan Bodinaud
Milena Legourska
Jae-Eun Lee
Adela Urcan
Evgeny Makhtin
Seconds violons
Peter Szüts
Nicolas Delclaud
Camille Ameriguian-Musco
Frédéric Gheorghiu
Nicolas Slusznis
Alexandre Guerchovitch
Gian Battista Ermacora
Laetitia Abraham
Katalin Szüts-Lukacs
Eric Thoreux
Raluca Hood-Marinescu
Andriy Ostapchuk
Sofija Radic
Hubert Touzery
Altos
François Méreaux
Federico Andres Hood
François Duchesne
Charles Lockie
Richard Chauvel
Mireille Wojciechowski
Sofia Timofeeva
Tristan Dely
Raphaël Chazal
Ying Xiong
Thomas Bouzy
Ruggero Mastrolorenzi
Violoncelles
Thierry Amadi
Delphine Perrone
Alexandre Fougeroux
Florence Riquet
Bruno Posadas
Thomas Ducloy
Patrick Bautz
Florence Leblond
Thibault Leroy
Caroline Roeland
Contrebasses
Matthias Bensmana
Tarik Bahous
NN
Jenny Boulanger
Sylvain Rastoul
Eric Chapelle
Dorian Marcel
Flûtes
ANNE MAUGUE
RAPHAËLLE TRUCHOT BARRAYA
DELPHINE HUEBER
Piccolo
MALCY GOUGET
Hautbois
MATTHIEU BLOCH
MATTHIEU PETITJEAN
MARTIN LEFÈVRE
Cor anglais
NN
Clarinettes
MARIE-B. BARRIÈRE-BILOTE
Véronique Audard
Petite clarinette
DIANA SAMPAIO
Clarinette basse
nn
Bassons
NN
ARTHUR MENRATH
MICHEL MUGOT
Contrebasson
FRÉDÉRIC CHASLINE
Cors
PATRICK PEIGNIER
ANDREA CESARI
DIDIER FAVRE
BERTRAND RAQUET
LAURENT BETH
DAVID PAUVERT
Trompettes
MATTHIAS PERSSON
GÉRALD ROLLAND
SAMUEL TUPIN
RÉMY LABARTHE
Trombones
JEAN-YVES MONIER
GILLES GONNEAU
LUDOVIC MILHIET
Tuba
FLORIAN WIELGOSIK
Timbales & Percussions
Julien Bourgeois
Mathieu Draux
Antoine Lardeau
Noé Ferro
Harpe
SOPHIA STECKELER
PERSONNEL DE SCENE
Directeur de scène
Xavier Laforge
Régisseur général
Elisabetta Acella
Régisseur de scène
Jérôme Chabreyrie
Régisseur lumières
Ferxel Fourgon
Régisseur sur-titrage
Sarah Caussé
Régisseurs enfants
Charline Amayenc
Laëtitia Estiot
TECHNIQUE
Directeur technique
Carlos Proenza
Responsable du bureau d’études
Nicola Schmid
Chef machiniste
Olivier Kinoo
Yann Moreau
Sous-chef machiniste
Jean-François Faraut
Peintre décorateur
Laurent Barcelo
Pupitreur machinerie
Schama Imbert
Techniciens de plateau
Jean-Philippe FARAUT
Morgan DUBOUIL
Luc REMILIEN
Nicolas MANCEL
Enzo CIMAMONTE
Khalid NEGRAOUI
David M'BAPPÉ
Mathias CATALDI
Chef électricien et vidéo
Benoît Vigan
Chef lumières adjoint
Dino Bastieri
Sous-chef Lumières
Gaël Le Maux
Pupitreur lumières
Gregory Masse
Techniciens lumière
Nicolas ALCARAZ
Kevin CUDIA
Thomas DUONG
Guillaume BREMOND
Marine GENNA
Harley BASILE
Alain MOREL
Ludovic DRUIT
Marine GENNA
Grégory CAMPANELLA
Alain MOREL
Krystel OKWELANI
Techniciens vidéo
Felipe MANRIQUE
Andolin Fanti
Chef accessoiriste
Audrey Moravec
Accessoiristes
Roland BIREN
Franck ESCOBAR
Nicolas LEROY
Basile Landry
Chef costumière-habilleuse
Eliane Mezzanotte
Chef costumière-habilleuse adjointe
Emilie Bouneau
Sous-chef costumière-habilleuse adjointe
Véronique TETU
Habilleurs
Stéphanie PUTEGNAT
Nadine CIMBOLINI
Edwige GALLI
Lauriane SENET
Christian CALVIERA
Florence CHAPUIS RINALDINO
Karinne MARTIN
Roxane AVELLO
Julie JACQUET
Lili FORTIN
Chef perruquière-maquilleuse
Déborah Nelson
Chef perruquière-maquilleuse adjointe
Alicia Bovis
Perruquiers
Jean-Pierre GALLINA
Marilyn RIEUL
Corinne PAULÉ
Agnès LOZANO
Maquilleurs
Francine RICHARD
Patricia ROCHWERG
Sophie KILIAN TERRIEN
Billetterie
Responsable billetterie
Virginie Hautot
Responsable adjointe billetterie
Jenna Brethenoux
Service billetterie
Ambre Gaillard
Dima Khabout
Assmaa Moussalli
“I have been performing in Puccini operas since I was 28 years old, first La bohème (beginning with the role of Musetta), and then Tosca, Manon Lescaut and finally Turandot. I plan to add La fanciulla del West someday soon. Puccini’s works are a large part of my vocal diet. His music is honey for the voice. You must have a beautiful instrument and meet his vocal demands, but when you do, it is one of the greatest experiences for a singer. It is amazing that we are celebrating the centennial of his death because it feels like his operas have been with us forever.”
Act I
In soffitta [A garret]
Paris, Christmas Eve, circa 1830, in the Latin Quarter garret shared by Marcello the painter, Rodolfo the poet, Colline the philosopher and Schaunard the musician.
Marcello is working on his painting Crossing of the Red Sea, his fingers numb with cold. As there is no more wood for the fire Rodolfo sacrifices his latest manuscript, burning it to provide some heat (“Nei cieli bigi”). Colline arrives; he has been trying unsuccessfully to pawn his books. The three friends are discussing their situation ironically when two delivery boys arrive laden with food and fuel, closely followed by Schaunard with a triumphant air: a bad-tempered Englishman had given him some money to get rid of his neighbour’s parrot. Schaunard’s friends barely listen to him, however, so eager are they to eat. Benoît, their landlord, arrives demanding the rent. The four friends ply the old man with drink and force him to tell them about his love affairs, mock him and then throw him out. Marcello, Colline and Schaunard head off for the nearby Café Momus. Rodolfo promises to join them as soon as he has finished writing an article. There is a knock on the door: it is the neighbour Mimì, whose candle has gone out. She is very weak and Rodolfo offers her some wine and a light for her candle. As she leaves Mimì realises she has mislaid her key. They both start to look for it (“Oh! sventata, sventata”). Both candles go out and in the darkness their hands touch. Overcome with emotion the poet takes Mimì’s frozen hand in his and introduces himself to her (“Che gelida manina… Chi son? son un poeta”). In turn Mimì tells him about her lonely life (“Mi chiamano Mimì”). The voices of Rodolfo’s friends are heard, impatiently urging him to join them. Rodolfo and Mimì declare their love and leave for the café (“O soave fanciulla”).
Act II
Il Quartiere Latino [The Latin Quarter]
The streets of the Latin Quarter are thronged with people milling around the street vendors. Rodolfo buys Mimì a hat and then introduces her to his friends at the nearby café. While children crowd around Parpignol the toy vendor the four bohemians and Mimì order their suppers. Marcello’s former lover Musetta arrives, arm in arm with Alcindoro, a rich and elderly suitor. Wanting to win back Marcello Musetta sings a languid waltz (“Quando me’n vo soletta”). She feigns a problem with her shoe in order to get rid of Alcindoro and then falls into Marcello’s arms. Meanwhile the four friends realize in horror that they have spent all of Schaunard’s money and cannot pay for their meal. Musetta solves the problem: she tells the waiter to give the bill to Alcindoro when he returns with her new shoes. The bohemians join a patrol of soldiers and leave with them, singing praises of the Latin Quarter.
Act III
La Barriera d’Enfer [The Toll Gate of Hell]
An icy cold dawn outside a Paris toll gate, late February. Milk maids, country women and vegetable farmers are let through the barrier. Mimì arrives, looking for the inn where Marcello is now living with Musetta in exchange for redecoration work. She pours out her distress at Rodolfo’s obsessive jealousy which is making their life unbearable (“Rodolfo m’ama”). Marcello advises her to follow his and Musetta’s example and to live a free and carefree life. He is shocked by Mimì’s cough, but then Rodolfo arrives. From her hiding place Mimì hears her lover accuse her of flirting and being unfaithful, but in the end he confesses to Marcello that he has been lying. He still loves Mimì, but fears for the future. He knows that Mimì is ill and that their poverty is condemning her to an early death (“Mimì è una civetta”). Mimì is alarmed by these words; her sobs and cough give her away. She resigns herself to leaving Rodolfo (“Donde lieta uscì”). Rodolfo vainly tries to reassure her about her health. They reunite and promise to stay together until spring. Meanwhile a jealous quarrel flares up between Marcello and Musetta (“Addio, dolce svegliare alla matina!”).
Act IV
In soffitta [A garret]
A few months later Rodolfo and Marcello lament their loneliness in their garret. Their lady loves have left them for wealthier lovers (“In un coupé... O Mimì, tu più non torni”). Colline and Schaunard arrive carrying a meagre meal of bread and kippers. To forget their hunger the bohemians pretend they are at a royal banquet, dancing, bowing to each other and feigning a duel. This happy interlude is interrupted by the arrival of Musetta. She tells them that Mimì is downstairs, extremely weak. Rodolfo rushes downstairs to fetch her; Musetta tells her friends that Mimì had begged her to bring her to her lover’s garret to die. They put Mimì to bed, but must find something to calm her suffering. Musetta sends Marcello out to sell her earrings to buy some medicine while she goes off to fetch her muff. Colline takes his overcoat to the pawnshop, accompanied by Schaunard (“Vecchia zimarra, senti”). Mimì and Rodolfo are left alone and recall when they first met and their first days together (“Sono andati?”). Musetta and Marcello return with a tonic and the muff. They tell her the doctor is on his way. Musetta begins to pray. When Schaunard and Colline return with the money, it is too late. Mimì has breathed her last breath, dying peacefully surrounded by her friends. Overcome with grief Rodolfo cries out her name.
When the rights of Henry Murger’s serialized novel Scènes de la vie de bohème, published from 1845 to 1848 in Le Corsaire-Satan, fell into the public domain, not one but two Italian composers set their sights on them: Giacomo Puccini and Ruggero Leoncavallo. And when at a chance meeting in a café in Milan the two musicians discovered the news, it put an end to a friendship that, notably, had led to Leoncavallo collaborating on the libretto of Manon Lescaut (1893). A fierce battle between them ensued, via publishers and newspapers. As neither side won, it was left to the public to decide.
Although Puccini had been slower than his rival in undertaking his Bohème, he narrowly beat him, however, in the race for the first premiere. Puccini’s opera was presented to the public on 1st February 1896 at the Teatro Regio in Turin, three years to the day after the triumph of Manon Lescaut, conducted by a promising young maestro: Arturo Toscanini. It received a mixed reception. Two months later, at the beginning of April, the opera was hugely successful in Palermo. But Puccini had to curb his impatience for more than a year before, in turn, the premiere of Leoncavallo’s opera took place (6th May 1897 at the Fenice in Venice). The beginnings were promising; in particular, a young tenor who would go on to have a glorious career, Enrico Caruso, stood out. But, after competing for ten years, the court of history ruled in favour of Puccini.
Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème depicted the daily lives of a group of Parisian artists and intellectuals under the July Monarchy. They were inspired by his own experience as a penniless writer. Instead of a career in law destined for him by his parents, he had preferred a precarious existence among up-and-coming artists and women “of easy virtue”. He spent much of his time at the Momus café, situated on the ground floor of the offices of the Journal des débats, at 17, rue des Prêtres-Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. The review’s most brilliant writers – Chateaubriand, Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Renan – would meet there and debate with the Parisian bohemian literary and artistic elite. It was there that Rodolphe, Marcel, Schaunard and Colline would become acquainted in the novel, before living together in the garret. Rodolphe is Murger, Schaunard is his friend Alexandre Schanne. Gustave Colline is a cross between the theologian Jean Wallon and the philosopher March Trapadoux, a giant noticeable for his green coat (the greatcoat sacrificed in the final scene of the opera). Two painters are easily recognizable behind Marcel: Lazare and Tabar (he had actually painted a picture titled Le Passage de la mer Rouge, before changing the title and the subject due to lack of money).
Mimì and Musetta, the two characters retained by Illica in the vast feminine panorama, bear the features of many of Murger’s friends, but the name Mimì comes from one of Musset’s novels, Mimi Pinson, profil de grisette, published in 1845. In Murger’s novel, however, it is a certain Francine who knocks on her neighbour’s door to rekindle her candle, searches for her lost key in the dark with him, warms her frozen hands in his and dies in his arms of tuberculosis.
As the rights of the play that Murger, assisted by Théodore Barrière, had adapted in 1849 from his novel under the title of La Vie de bohème were still protected, Puccini and his librettists, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, could not use it for their opera. Nonetheless, structured in twenty-three separate and concurrent episodes, like pieces of a patchwork that it is for the reader to connect together, the novel was in perfect accordance with the composer’s wishes. At first Illica opted to divide it into five acts. He then deleted the third act (an improvised ball where Mimì meets Viscount Paolo, rendering Rodolfo mad with jealousy), narrowing the action down to the four scenes that we know today.
Claire Delamarche, translated by Mary McCabe
La bohème, Puccini’s fourth opera, touches our hearts in the most direct ways. Mimì is one of those sweet and fragile heroines that we all want to protect and cosset. And with their misfortunes, whether large or small, their way of making the best of a bad situation, the Bohemians could be any one of us. Here, Puccini is at his best, but he uses his art without grandiloquence, mindful of the tiny details of life that, ornamented with passion and humanity, assume greatness and attain universality.
For La bohème Puccini disposed of a concise and perfectly balanced libretto where lightness and tragedy, exuberance and tenderness are equally apportioned. Two scenes in the confined garret are frameworks for the two street scenes in Paris; the delicate, intimate love between Rodolfo and Mimì counterbalances the passionate and demonstrative love between Marcello and Musetta. The cold, the snow provide a fine thread that connects these two seemingly disparate scenes and then invades the stage when Mimì dies.
Puccini opens the opera with a powerful motif symbolising the Bohemians’ joyful insouciance. This motif (that reappears at the beginning of Scene IV) comes from a Capriccio sinfonico for orchestra that Puccini wrote during his own Bohemian student years, when he was studying at the Milan conservatory and sharing a room with Mascagni.
The musical palette is extraordinarily varied. In the first half of scene 1, Puccini uses humour to the point of caricature (the episode where the four accomplices bully the unfortunate Benoît), similar to certain scenes of Falstaff, Verdi’s final opera (1893). When Rodolfo decides to remain alone, a violin solo, in anticipation of the poet’s next aria, shifts the atmosphere and Mimì enters. This moment encapsulates Puccini’s entire vocal art: the arias come tiptoe in, almost reluctantly, gradually taking shape in increasingly sensual melodies.
In the second scene, mainly invented by Illica, Puccini produces a variety of musical pleasures in a vast fresco of characters and picturesque situations. In the middle of this merry hustle and bustle Musetta’s waltz radiates sensuality.
The third scene is also the fruit of lIllica’s imagination. At first Puccini refused it, fearing (as for the scene abandoned in Musetta’s courtyard) that it would slow the action down too much. It would have been a shame to deprive oneself of such a beautiful scene, with its striking musical portrait of the bitter early morning cold (open fifths on the flutes and harp evoking the dance of the snowdrops), illuminated by Mimì’s aria “Donde lieta uscì”.
Puccini was profoundly affected by Mimì’s tragic end. On the score, at the moment when his fragile heroine dies, he drew a skull and two crossbones, as on a pirate’s flag, with the simple word “Mimì”. This was the only passage that he composed in isolation, far from the noise of La Bohème café in Torre del Lago, where he liked to write surrounded by his friends. He admitted that he broke down in tears.
More than a century has passed since the performance in Palermo that launched the opera, and during all these years the public, also, has never ceased to shed tears at Mimì’s death.
Claire Delamarche, translated by Mary McCabe