Music by Giacomo Puccini
Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica

Detroit Opera House
Detroit, Michigan
April 6-12, 2022
Co-produced with Boston Lyric Opera and Spoleto Festival USA

Director: Yuval Sharon
Set Designer: John Conklin
Lighting Designer: John Torres
Costume Designer: Jessica Jahn
Conductor: Roberto Kalb

Premiered at Detroit Opera in 2022, and with further performances at Spoleto Festival USA, Opera Philadelphia, and Boston Lyric Opera, Sharon’s La bohème casts familiar elements in a new light as he stages the work in reverse order from Act IV to Act I. In this new arrangement, Sharon reappraises the ways in which audiences and artists can interact with repertoire, bringing fresh eyes and ears to a classic while extracting hope from tragedy, life from death, and love from loneliness. The end result is an opera that begins with death and tragedy, but ends with a world of promise and potential amidst a new love—and an audience left not with the heaviness of inevitability, but with the notion that the pain was worth the fleeting moments of joy. 

In order to keep the narrative of the reverse staging cohesive, Sharon introduces a new role: The Wanderer, portrayed in the premiere run by George Shirley. The Wanderer gives a spoken introduction to each act, helping the audience follow the reverse chronology of the story. In addition to his spoken introductions to each act, The Wanderer also appears in three new fourth-wall-breaking scenes; in each appearance, the action is put on hold as he asks the audience to consider which direction the story could have gone.

Photography by Austin Richey and Vesna Zdravkoski.