"But it's a La bohme like you've never seen it before," says Frank Luzi, Vice President of Opera Philadelphia.
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"But we're going to do it a little differently this time around. We're going to do it in reverse order," he says.
The idea for this reboot came from director Yuval Sharon.
"Traditionally, you begin with young love and hope, and you end with tragedy," he explains.
By flipping the order of this opera, Luzi says it allows audiences to have "a fresh interpretation."
The four-act opera follows two couples.
"Mim and Rodolfo have this love at first sight story," says Kara Goodrich, a longtime Opera Philadelphia singer.
This season she is making her leading role debut as Mim.
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"She works as a seamstress and she kind of has this quiet life that is interrupted when she meets Rodolfo and his friends on Christmas Eve," says Goodrich.
The second couple is Musetta and Marcello.
Goodrich describes them as "a very fiery couple."
"They have this on again, off again romance," she says.
The opera is by Giacomo Puccini and the music is all sung in Italian.
Goodrich says in this production, "we're adding some text and an extra character."
The extra character, known as 'the wanderer,' has an English-speaking role.
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Goodrich says this helps make the opera very accessible, so audiences always know what's happening.
Luzi says Opera Philadelphia wanted to stay true to the story, while also giving the artform space to breathe and grow.
"We think this is going to be something that a lot of people will love," he says of this production.
Opera Philadelphia presents La bohme April 28-May 7 at the Academy of Music.
Opera Philadelphia, Puccini's La bohme | Tickets
The Academy of Music
240 S. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102