An opera in four acts by Giacomo Puccini to a libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. Puccini's masterpiece about young love and death in a Parisian garret brings together two rising opera stars, Patricia Racette and Marcello Giordani
. Sung in Italian.
Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, New York, conductor Nello Santi
Acts 1 and 2 7.30 The James Naughtie Interview British baritone Anthony Michaels -Moore is making his debut at the Met in this production of La Bohème. He talks with James Naughtie about his career so far and about this latest development.
8.00 Act 3
8.25 Bohemian Paris
Christopher Prendergast explores the Parisian background to Puccini's setting. "A district bordered on the north by cold, on the west by hunger, on the south by love, and on the east by hope." Such was an anonymous 19th-century geographer's definition of Bohemia, both a geographical quarter and a state of mind, its boundaries defined as much by lifestyle as by location. The run-down Left Bank gave 19th- and 20th-century Europe a potent cultural reference point.
8.50 Act 4
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