Opera Australia: La Bohème

On a freezing Christmas Eve, love sparks. Two hands meet in the dark and four friends’ lives change forever.

Experience the original bohemian love story. When Mimì meets Rodolfo, it’s love at first touch. They head out to bustling Café Momus, where the feisty Musetta and Marcello rekindle their relationship. But even the deepest love can’t warm a freezing winter. For our bohemians, everything is possible and the future can’t come quickly enough. Rodolfo and his friends are determined to make their mark on the world and experience everything it has to offer – but right now they’d settle for something warm to eat.

Some emotions are too big for words alone, and for that, we have music. La Bohème exposes your soul to the feelings that only music can express. The music soars with the ecstasy of love, crackles with the pain of jealousy and cries with the agony of loss. Puccini’s score has always captured the soaring spirit of young love, and this new production breathes fresh life into one of the world’s favourite operas. Award-winning director Dean Bryant (Anything Goes, Sweet Charity) brings his trademark wit and vivacity to this new staging, which captures that giddy moment where you and your friends feel you'll live forever. 

La Bohème is touring throughout New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania in 2024. For booking details and tour dates, visit opera.org.au/on-tour.

Director: Dean Bryant
Set and Costume Designer: Isabel Hudson
Lighting Designer: Damien Cooper

Duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes, including interval

Note: Sung in Italian with English surtitles. Performed with a Live Chamber Orchestra 

This production is supported by The Opera Conference, Australia’s national partnership of professional opera companies, the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts and funding advisory body, by the NSW Government through Create NSW, and by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.