I used to think that Puccini’s La bohème is not particularly suited to regie, but there have been some very interesting regie choices associated with it. I won’t mention the “outer space” La Boheme that focuses on stories we tell ourselves in moments of complete isolation, or the backwards “merrily we roll along” time reversal regie.

Instead, let me focus on a production that both JJ and I liked quite a lot: Stefan Herheim‘s La bohème is a somber, funereal reimagining of love as it collides with death: Mimì flatlines as the curtain rises, bald and gaunt from chemo, and Rodolfo remembers their time together, casting people from the hospital (doctors, nurses, orderlies) as their friends in his attempt to come to terms with Mimì’s death. Death is the prima donna in this opera, and Herheim doesn’t let you forget it even in the cafe scenes.