~~~~~~~~~~~click on photo to enbiggen~~~~~~~~~~~
One of my favourite operas is “La Bohėme”.
I may have seen it five times, I may have seen it ten. I lost track.
Each production has captivated me.
On many levels.
The story: Love found. Love lost. Love extinguished. Love grieved.
Paris. 1896. A garret. Rooftops. Chimneys. Students. Mimi.
This past spring, 2009, I took a picture of Paris garrets from my room.
And I imagine the Italian composer, Puccini, composing the beautiful music based loosely upon a few stories about French students and a gypsy, living only in the Bohemian Paris of his imagination.
And I hear, like the echo of a dream, my father singing the famous Rudolfo aria from it while in the perfect acoustics of our small bathroom in Ireland: Che Gelida Manina: “Your tiny hand is frozen”.
Now and again, as the picture above flashes up on the slideshow in my sidebar, I think of all of this.
And it all makes a strange and lovely sense.
It is my husbands favorite opera as well... :)
ReplyDeleteWe have seen it in London and in New York. Both productions were amazing!
Oh Nevin;
ReplyDeleteThat warms my heart!
Anyone who loves La Boheme is a kindred spirit.
I never fail to cry when I'm at it.
Not as much as at Madama Butterfly but close....
XO
WWW
Ha, “La Bohėme”.
ReplyDelete[Not that I want anyone to think I were a kindred spirit :)]
Though I have never seen the opera my favourite song from it is Musetta's Waltz.
ReplyDeleteCoincidently my niece spent three weeks living in a pensione, I think its called,on the Left Bank last Spring.
Oh Sean:
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't think that for a minute. Not you!
XO
WWW
GFB:
ReplyDeleteThe photo is from the Left Bank, a very small hotel with tiny balconies.
XO
WWW
I love Puccini. Doc Severinson has a trumpet medley of Puccini that I used to hear all the time on the local NPR station in Rochester, NY (in a former lifetime or I should say chapter of my life)
ReplyDeleteI'm not an opera lover, but who can fail to be interested in those timeless themes? Who can escape the entanglements of love?
ReplyDeleteGorgeous moody photograph, WWW!
ReplyDeleteI've never seen La Boheme. I do love all the famous arias, from well known operas. The only opera I've seen from beginning to end isIl Trovatore" by Verdi. Our 6th form at school presented it, I was entranced. Got into trouble for skipping classes to watch rehearsals! Aeons ago. :-)
Karin:
ReplyDeleteDoc was an extremely underrated musician and had a hidden classical talent.
Rochester? I've actually been there, in another lifetime too :^)
Xo
WWW
Nick:
ReplyDeleteAnd the beautiful music ignites the soul observing the emotional drama.
Oh the entanglement!!
Xo
WWW
T:
ReplyDeleteYes, I tried to capture the dying of the light which added more drama to the rather smart looking garrets below me. Not at all what Puccini envisioned!
I love nost of Verdi'w work too. I must say that was a very ambitious undertaking by your 6th form!!
XO
WWW
I love La Boheme. It is the first opera I saw. My second daughter took me to a college production when she was a student. It is full of lovely melodies. I wonder why music of the 19th century makes sense to me and what people seem to want to listen to today just sounds like noise.
ReplyDelete20CW:
ReplyDeleteWell some of today's music sounds like noise and then I listen to Leonard Cohen's "Alleluia" covered by so many great voices and it never fails to kick me in the gut.
XO
WWW