Vancouver Opera’s 2018/2019 season and festival bring us a lush new production of Puccini’s La Bohème that is quite literally designed as an enormous vintage postcard of Paris. The curtain rises on a modern-day flea market, with tourists taking selfies, sellers touting their wares and an accordion duo entertaining the crowd. Amid the bustle, a lone visitor puts a record on a vintage gramophone from which plays the opening bars of Giacomo Puccini’s famous opera, transporting the audience back in time.
Canadian designer and director duo André Barbe and Renaud Doucet – the team behind VO’s Turandot in 2017 – has created a beautiful and gloriously over-the-top production, first seen at the Scottish Opera where it was highly successful. The setting is updated to the interwar years of the 1920s when American artists and writers flocked to Paris to live the bohemian life.
Literally meaning ‘the bohemians’, this tragic love story of passion, poetry and poverty, with uplifting humorous moments, features soprano France Bellemare, tenor Yosep Kang and baritone Phillip Addis and is directed by world-renowned conductor Judith Yan.
While La Bohéme is sung in Italian, English SURTITLES™ will be projected above the stage.
Opening night of La Bohéme is Thursday February 14, 2019 at 7:30pm, with subsequent evening performances on Saturday, February 16, Tuesday, February 19 and Thursday, February 21 at 7:30pm, and a 2:00pm matinee on Sunday, February 24.
All performances take place at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre (Georgia and Hamilton), Vancouver. Tickets ranging in price from $50 to $175 are available at the Vancouver Opera Ticket Centre, by telephone (604-683-0222), or online at www.vancouveropera.ca.
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