La bohème

Music by Giacomo Puccini Libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa

Artistic Team

Conductor Kensho Watanabe Director Yuval Sharon Associate Director James Blaszko Set Designer John Conklin Costume Designer Jessica Jahn Lighting Designer John Torres

Cast

Rodolfo Matthew White Mimì Lauren Michelle Marcello Troy Cook Musetta Brandie Sutton Colline Calvin Griffin Alcindoro John Allen Nelson Schaunard Benjamin Taylor Parpignol Shane Thomas, Jr. Sergeant Matthew Marinelli Customs Officer James C. Harris

The Wanderer George Shirley

Assistant Conductor Kamna Gupta Children’s Choir Coordinator Suzanne Fleming-Atwood

Children’s Choir Assistant Catherine Hicks Harmonia Children’s Chorus Colin Baldwin; Maeve Baldwin; Sean Baldwin; Maddalena Buzzelli; Caroline Buzzelli; Jane Jordan; Maggie Jordan; Caroline Jordan; Keagan Lynch; Deaglan Lynch; Aisling Lynch; Lili Maino; Kate Ridenour; Tommy Romano; Vivian Santos; Jack Santos Vocal Coach Diane Richardson Musical Preparation Keun-A Lee

Production Stage Manager Becca Eddins Associate Costume Designer Sophie Schneider

Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra Spoleto Festival USA Chorus

Scenery constructed at TTS Studios Costumes constructed at Detroit Opera Costume Shop

CHARLESTON GAILLARD CENTER Martha and John M. Rivers Performance Hall

May 28 at 7:30pm; May 31 at 7:30pm; June 4 at 7:30pm; June 7 at 7:30pm; June 11 at 8:00pm

1 hours, 45 minutes Performed without an intermission

Sung in Italian with English supertitles

A Co-Production of Spoleto Festival USA, Detroit Opera, and Boston Lyric Opera.

Opera Programming is endowed by the Arthur and Holly Magil Foundation.

Sponsored by BMW Group Plant Spartanburg

These performances are made possible in part through funds from the Spoleto Festival Endowment, generously supported by BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America.

Spoleto Festival USA is proud to present these performances with the support of the Charleston Gaillard Center.

La bohème tells the story of three couples: the romantic poet Rodolfo and the serene, self-possessed flowergirl Mimì; the temperamental painter Marcello and the fiercely independent singer Musetta; the lovably pedantic musician Schaunard and the taciturn philosopher Colline.

DEATH ⁄ In their cramped, spare apartment, lovesickness blocks Rodolfo and Marcello from creating. Schaunard and Colline try making the best of their impoverishment by pretending their meager meal is a grand ball. Musetta bursts in with the gravely ill Mimì; Schaunard recognizes that she has little time left. Marcello and Musetta reconcile and search for a doctor and any last comfort they can offer Mimì; Colline offers to sell the beloved coat that Schaunard bought for him to pay for the doctor. Briefly alone, Mimì and Rodolfo recall the first time they met. The friends come back with medicine, money, and a muff for Mimì’s cold hands. They await the doctor’s arrival, but it’s too late: Mimì’s life slips through their fingers.

BARRIÈRE ⁄ Three months earlier. At a border crossing at dawn, Mimì desperately seeks Marcello. He has been living with Musetta as boarders in a shabby tavern, where he paints and she offers singing lessons. Mimì confesses that Rodolfo has been erratic and cruel to her and wants to end their relationship. Rodolfo has slept at the tavern, and as he confides to Marcello, Mimì eavesdrops on the conversation. At first, Rodolfo lies about the reason for their break-up: he’s bored with her, and she’s a terrible flirt. But he lets down his guard and reveals the truth: he knows that Mimì is very sick and feels powerless to help her. With the secret of her sickness revealed, Mimì holds back her emotions and ends their relationship. But as the two of them recount the many things they will miss—and with Marcello and Musetta’s latest turbulent breakup unfolding in the background—Rodolfo and Mimì decide to stay together only through the winter.

MOMUS ⁄ Two months earlier—Christmas Eve. The streets of Paris are ablaze with life and a carnivalesque anarchy. Amid shouts of street hawkers, Rodolfo buys Mimì a bonnet near the Café Momus before introducing her to his friends. Musetta enters ostentatiously on the arm of the wealthy Alcindoro. Trying to regain the painter’s attention, she sings a waltz about her irresistible beauty. Marcello successfully ignores her, but when Musetta pretends to suffer from a pinched foot, he falls into a passionate frenzy. As the couple reunites, a rousing march fills the streets.

LOVE ⁄ Earlier that night. Marcello and Rodolfo try to keep warm by burning pages from Rodolfo’s drama. Colline enters in time to catch the last of the dying flames. Schaunard, newly employed as a music tutor, surprises them all with a bounty of food, wine, cigars, and wood for the stove. He urges the friends to save the provisions—in case of a gloomy future—and eat a celebratory meal at Café Momus instead. Rodolfo stays behind to write, but he’s not inspired—until a knock at the door signals the arrival of Mimì, his new neighbor, whose candle has gone out on the drafty stairs. Out of breath, she faints to the floor, but a cool splash of water revives her. Rodolfo ignites her candle, but when the two search for Mimì’s dropped key, both candles are blown out. In the moonlight, the poet takes the girl’s cold hand and offers to warm it for her. He introduces himself as a poet who lives with hope in his heart. She tells him about her quiet life and the poems she reads in the flowers. Overwhelmed with love, they go out into the night, their cries of love echoing into eternity.

— Yuval Sharon

Director’s Note

“How do you begin telling the story of a great love when you know it ended in disaster?”

Sandro Veronesi’s line from his book Il colibrì (The Hummingbird) accompanies a story that hops back and forth in time, narrating a tender romance that ended in heartbreak. Veronesi’s goal is to “demolish the tyranny of chronology” and to place more emphasis on how things happen, rather than what happens. Along the way, the reader is confronted with the unruly and indirect nature of memory, and she may come to understand what the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard summarized so perfectly: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”

Veronesi’s recent novel is a fitting point of departure for this production of La bohème, which begins at the end and works in reverse order, back to the first moment Mimì and Rodolfo met. The kind of narrative experiment undertaken in Veronesi’s novel seems hard to imagine in an art form like opera, where the “tyranny of chronology” seems fixed in the rigid architecture of the music. Most operas would not sustain this kind of approach, with arrow-like stories that move in only one direction.

But Bohème tells its story in a highly unconventional manner: Puccini described the work as a piece in quattro quadri, or “four pictures.” Henri Murger’s original work, Scenes from the Bohemian Life, was published in serial form from 1845 to 1848, resulting in an episodic, impressionistic snapshot of a revolutionary underbelly of society. Atmosphere and color are more important than the narrative arcs we find in great novels of the time, and the resulting work resembles the nascent art of photography more than classic literature. If Murger’s writing was photographic, Puccini’s opera— written as the “moving image” was born—is powerfully cinematic. Simultaneous action, interspersed scenes, overlapping events—all of this creates a new and very modern sense of time that is barely contained by the musical meter. There are few, if any, moments in opera that capture falling in love—with its anarchic rush of impressions and the psychedelic dissolution of time—as effectively as Act II. Bohème may be the most popular opera in the repertoire, but its radical qualities are paradoxically undervalued. (Is the opera too popular to claim it for the avant-garde?)

One of the remarkable discoveries we’ve made in preparing this production is how lightning-fast the entire opera plays out. Performed without intermission and with one discrete cut in the first act, Bohème clocks in at just over 90 minutes. This comes as a shock to most opera patrons, who think of Bohème as nearly three-hour affairs. Cumbersome scene changes—taking the notion of “four pictures” literally—usually necessitate at least one, if not two, intermissions. The pressure to “over-do” Bohème also creates uneasy contradictions: the starving artists describe their garret as “squalid,” “drafty,” and “cramped,” but most productions have them living in what looks like the most enviable penthouse in Paris.

I wanted to create a production that emphasized the swiftness of the music and the brevity of these lives; all the myriad details that make up a typical Bohème—the stereotypes and clichés, as well as the pictorial expectations—have been sifted away in search of the work’s true gold. We are after the essence of this work, which I think of as the perfectly preserved energy of being young, full of hope, and in love with life.

There are big questions invoked when we perform a classic like La bohème in a non-traditional way, such as: how and why do we perform masterpieces in the here and now? What is to be gained by disrupting conventional listening? Is it possible to treat operatic masterpieces with the same interpretive flexibility that, say, Shakespeare’s plays demand? While those provocations offer a background to the work we’ve done with this opera, they are also, fittingly, not our endgame, but our point of departure. Likewise, I hope it offers you a point of departure to listen and experience the opera as if it is a world premiere. More importantly, I hope it invites you to explore a personal meditation on life and love. To return to Veronesi: how do you tell your great love story? Do you start from the beginning, or do you chart a meandering path? Disaster, death, and loss will inevitably befall even the happiest lives and loves— but is that really the end of the story?

— Yuval Sharon

Artistic Team

KENSHO WATANABE (conductor) is fast emerging onto the international stage as one of the most exciting and versatile young conductors to come out of the United States. Recently recognized as a recipient of a Career Assistance Award by the Solti Foundation US, Watanabe held the position of Assistant Conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra from 2016 to 2019. Watanabe has previously been an inaugural conducting fellow of the Curtis Institute of Music from 2013 to 2015. Recent highlights include debuts with the London Philharmonic and Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestras, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Rhode Island Philharmonic, as well as his Finnish debut with the Jyväskylä Sinfonia.

YUVAL SHARON (director) has amassed an unconventional body of work that expands the operatic form. He is founder and co-Artistic Director of The Industry in Los Angeles and the Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director of Detroit Opera. Sharon made his debut with Detroit Opera in 2020 with Twilight: Gods, an innovative adaptation of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. The first American ever invited to direct at Bayreuth, Sharon distinguished himself with a boldly progressive Lohengrin in 2018, using subtle dramatic direction to completely overhaul the opera into a critique of entrenched power structures. He is the recipient of the 2014 Götz Friedrich Prize in Germany for his production of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic. In 2017, Sharon was honored with a MacArthur Fellowship and a Foundation for Contemporary Art grant for theater. JAMES BLASZKO (associate director) is a queer first-generation American director and creative producer. Before the pandemic, Blaszko staged Puccini’s Il Trittico in South Korea, the opening ceremony of the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe, and Britten’s Les Illuminations with selections of Debussy and Patti Smith in Maine. He returned to live performance in 2021 by devising and staging Puccini and Verdi Play Ball with Tulsa Opera on their city’s baseball stadium. He is currently the tour producer of The Peculiar Patriot by Liza Jessie Peterson, last performed and recorded live at Angola State Prison in January 2020.

JOHN CONKLIN (set designer) has designed for the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Opera Theatre of St Louis, Glimmerglass Opera, and the opera companies of Houston, Seattle, Dallas, Washington, and Minneapolis, among others. Abroad he has worked at the English National Opera, the Bayerische Staatsoper, and The Australian Opera. In addition, he served as Director of Production for New York City Opera, Associate Director of Glimmerglass Opera, and is currently Artistic Advisor to Boston Lyric Opera. He recently retired from teaching at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

JESSICA JAHN (costume designer) has worked on off-Broadway productions including Coal Country (The Public Theatre); Gloria: A Life (Daryl Roth Theatre); Die Mommie Die! (New World Stages); and Monodramas (New York City Opera). Regionally, she has designed for American Repertory Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Kennedy Center, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, and Houston Grand Opera. Her international repertoire includes The Gran Teatre de Liceu, Wexford Opera, and soon she will work on Orfeo ed Euridice (San Francisco Opera). Jahn is currently a member of the steering committees of Opera America’s Women’s Opera Network (WON) and Racial Justice Opera Network (RJON), as well as Opera America Board’s Membership Committee.

JOHN TORRES (lighting designer) is a New York-based lighting designer working in theater, dance, motion, and print. Recent opera projects include Turandot (Opera Bastille, Paris); Tristan und Isolde (La Monnaie, Brussels); ATLAS, directed by Yuval Sharon (Disney Hall, LA Philharmonic); Eden with Joyce DiDonato (Bozar, Brussels); Der Messias with Robert Wilson (Salzburg Festival). Theatrical work includes Twelfth Night; A Bright Room Called Day (The Public, NYC); The Black Clown (A.R.T. Cambridge); Only an Octave Apart and Hamlet (St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn); and Assembly (Park Avenue Armory). His designs for television include Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek Live! and Joni 75 (PBS). Torres has worked with many of today’s prominent musicians including Taylor Mac (A 24 Decade..., St. Ann’s Warehouse),

Solange Knowles, Florence and the Machine, and Usher: The Vegas Residency. Dance productions include Available Light, Lucinda Childs (Théâtre de La Ville, Paris) and Lost Mountain, Bobbi Jene Smith (La Mama, NYC).

Cast

TROY COOK (Marcello) has been praised for his “technically flawless performance” by Opera News and heralded throughout his career for his vocal suaveness and vibrant stage presence. His many and varied performances include appearances with the Metropolitan Opera; Washington National Opera; Royal Opera, Covent Garden; Teatro San Carlo, Napoli; The Dallas Opera; and Opera Pacific, among others. An acclaimed interpreter of new works, he created the role of John Cree in Elizabeth Cree, as well as Father Palmer in Silent Night.

CALVIN GRIFFIN (Colline) began his 2021/2022 season with a return to the Metropolitan Opera and a Lyric Opera of Chicago debut as Robert in Fire Shut Up In My Bones. He also sang the role of Tommy in Fellow Travelers with Opera Columbus and is very excited to make his Spoleto Festival USA debut as Colline in La bohème. Recently, Griffin has sung the title role in Le nozze di Figaro with both Florentine Opera and Florida Grand Opera, Eddie in The Fix with Minnesota Opera, as well as Bartolo in Il barbiere di Siviglia with Wolf Trap Opera.

JAMES C. HARRIS (Customs Officer) is a versatile artist who enjoys performance experience encompassing opera, musical theater, and straight theater. Previous Spoleto appearances include Path of Miracles (2019). Recent opera credits include Le nozze di Figaro (Count Almaviva) and Orpheus in the Underworld (Jupiter) at Manhattan School of Music. Recent theater credits include Songs for a New World (Limelight Theatre Company) and Will Wilson Saves the World (New York City premiere reading). Concert work includes Oedipus Rex (Opera Philadelphia) and L’enfant et les sortilèges (Philadelphia Orchestra). He received a BM in Voice Performance from Westminster Choir College and first-year MM at Manhattan School of Music.

MATTHEW MARINELLI (Sergeant), baritone, last performed with Spoleto Festival USA in 2019 (Path of Miracles) and in 2018 as the boisterous marionette, Geronimo, in Carlo Colla and Sons Marionette Company’s Il Matrimonio Segreto. Outside of Spoleto, you can find Marinelli regularly performing in New York and Philadelphia with the Philadelphia Symphonic Choir—most recently premiering The Hours with Yannick Nézet-Séguin—or performing with several other choral, barbershop, and opera groups in the surrounding areas. LAUREN MICHELLE (Mimì) is a native of Los Angeles. She is a graduate of UCLA and The Juilliard School. She was a prize winner of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition and is an internationally recognized opera star. Some of her notable international roles include Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, Musetta in La bohème, Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi. She has performed at Covent Garden as Jessica in The Merchant of Venice and completed a season as a house soprano with Vienna State Opera. She sang in concert under the baton of Plácido Domingo at LA Opera and made her debut with Washington National Opera to critical acclaim alongside Eric Owens. She was awarded First Place in both the Lotte Lenya Competition and the Marcello Giordani International Vocal Competition.

JOHN ALLEN NELSON (Alcindoro) is an Irish American baritone and recently debuted as Count Almaviva in Opera Ithaca’s Le Nozze di Figaro and as Guglielmo in Bar Harbor Music Festival’s Così fan tutte. He has appeared with New York City Opera, Opera Santa Barbara, Boston Lyric Opera, Utah Opera, and Minnesota Opera, among others. He is an active performer of new works, including Angels in America, Hamlet, The Grapes of Wrath, and Stonewall, in which he originated the role of Giordano. He holds degrees from Boston University’s Opera Institute, UMKC Conservatory of Music, and St. John’s University. He will make his Spoleto debut as Alcindoro in La bohème.

GEORGE SHIRLEY (The Wanderer) is one of America’s most versatile tenors and enlightened musicians. During a 57-year career performing more than 80 operatic roles, he received international acclaim for his performances with the Metropolitan Opera and with major opera houses and festivals worldwide. Shirley received a Grammy Award in 1968 for his role (Ferrando) in the prize-winning RCA recording of Mozart’s Così fan tutte. Shirley was the first Black tenor and second African American male to sing leading roles with the Metropolitan Opera, where he remained for 11 years as leading artist. He was the first Black high school vocal music teacher in the Detroit Public Schools and the first Black member of the United States Army Chorus in Washington, D.C. In 2015, he received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama. George Shirley is The Joseph Edgar Maddy Distinguished University Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance.

BRANDIE SUTTON (Musetta) made a very successful debut in Vienna in the autumn of 2020 as Clara in Porgy and Bess at Theatre an der Wien. This was also the role of her Metropolitan Opera debut in February, 2020, where she returned this past December as La Fee in Cendrillon. She has also sung with New York City Opera and at the opera houses of Seattle, Geneva, Hamburg, Dresden, Frankfurt, Bari, and Mexico (Palacio de las Bellas Artes). A versatile concert artist, Ms. Sutton has sung with the Mostly

Mozart Festival, National Symphony Orchestra, Jazz at Lincoln Center, South Florida Symphony, Royal Danish Symphony, Oregon Symphony, and this season, Carnegie Hall. During the pandemic, she has appeared in a wide range of virtual events.

BENJAMIN TAYLOR (Schaunard) recently made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Chester in Fire Shut Up in My Bones and at the Detroit Opera. Mr. Taylor will make his Spoleto debut as Schaunard in La bohème. Upcoming debuts include Cincinnati Opera for the world premiere of Castor and Patience as West, North Carolina Opera for Sanctuary Road as William Still, and a return to Pittsburgh Opera for The Magic Flute as Papageno. Taylor is an alum of Pittsburgh Opera Resident Artist Program, Boston University (Master of Music), BU Opera Institute (Performer’s Certificate), and Morgan State University (Bachelor of Arts). He was an Apprentice Artist at The Santa Fe Opera, Gerdine Young Artist, and Richard Gaddes Festival Artist at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

SHANE THOMAS, JR. (Parpignol) serves as the Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He has performed as a soloist and a chorister for choral ensembles throughout the United States, including BWV: Cleveland’s Bach Choir, Vocal Arts Ensemble, Coro Volante, Bach Ensemble of St. Thomas, and the Festival Singers of Florida. Thomas holds a DMA in Choral Conducting from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, MM from Westminster Choir College, and BME from Stetson University. Past Spoleto Festival USA appearances include the 2013 and 2014 Festivals with the Westminster Choir.

MATTHEW WHITE (Rodolfo) is a recent graduate of Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts. In the past year, Matthew has sung Faust in Boulanger’s Faust et Hélène with the Houston Symphony and Bard Music Festival, made a house and role debut as Don José in Carmen with Arizona Opera, returned to Cincinnati Opera for Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance, and took the role of Rodolfo in the premiere of Yuval Sharon’s new production of La bohème (Detroit Opera). In the upcoming year, Matthew will sing the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto with Opera Colorado and Utah Opera and will continue to sing Rodolfo with Boston Lyric Opera. SUZANNE FLEMING-ATWOOD (children’s choir coordinator) has a Bachelor of Music Education degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and a Master of Music in Voice from the Catholic University of America. Fleming-Atwood studied opera as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar in Milan, Italy. In demand as a performer, music educator, and voice teacher, she works at Christ Our King-Stella Maris School, where she directs choirs, teaches general music, and directs numerous musical performances during the year. Her children’s choir, Harmonia, will be making its Spoleto Festival USA debut in La bohème. Harmonia has performed for Piccolo Spoleto and with the College of Charleston Concert Choir as well as the Charleston Symphony Orchestra.

KEUN-A LEE (musical preparation) started piano studies at age four. She received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Piano Performance at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea, where she won the silver medal of Samik Piano Competition. She then earned both a master’s degree and Artist Diploma in Collaborative Piano from The Juilliard School. She holds a Professional Studies Certificate in Vocal Accompanying from the Manhattan School of Music. Also, she has finished her term with the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera. She has been on the music staffs of Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opera Colorado, Detroit Opera, Spoleto Festival USA, The Juilliard School of Music, and Manhattan School of Music, among others.

DIANE RICHARDSON (vocal coach) received degrees in music from Oberlin College and Columbia University. Additionally, she trained professionally at The Juilliard School, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and L’Università per Stranieri in Perugia, Italy. Skilled in operatic and lieder repertoire, Richardson has toured extensively with leading artists throughout the US and Europe. She taught at the Yale School of Music, served as assistant conductor with New York City Opera and the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy, and has been associated with Spoleto Festival USA since its first season. Richardson holds concurrent faculty appointments at The Juilliard School and Binghamton University.

THE SPOLETO FESTIVAL USA CHORUS is a new professional choir, led by Festival Director of Choral Activities Joe Miller, that builds upon the Festival’s longstanding tradition of exceptional choral music. The Festival Chorus consists of more than 50 vocal fellows with broad and versatile skillsets. Each season, vocal fellows perform major choral works; serve as the choir for Spoleto’s mainstage operas, with select singers covering both large and small roles; and take part in special projects or smaller ensemble works.

THE SPOLETO FESTIVAL USA ORCHESTRA serves as a backbone to the Festival’s programming, appearing in many different configurations as part of opera, symphonic, choral, chamber, and contemporary performances. Comprised of early career musicians, the Orchestra is formed anew each year through nationwide auditions. Alumni of the Orchestra can be found in orchestras throughout the world, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, and many others.

Actors

Jessica Annunziata Biba Bell X. Alexander Durden Hank Felix Peter Knox Alexis Primus