Giacomo Puccini’s “La Bohème,” one of the most beloved operas ever written, will come to the Eisenhower Auditorium stage at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 28, and 2 p.m. Sunday, March 29, in a production by Penn State’s College of Arts and Architecture, School of Music and Center for the Performing Arts.
Featuring sets from Pittsburgh Opera, the production includes Penn State School of Music students and alumni as principal singers. The Penn State Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Gerardo Edelstein, provides live music.
“La Bohème,” which inspired the hit Broadway musical “Rent,” tells a story of love, life and loss in the Latin Quarter of Paris in the mid-19th century. Since its premiere in 1896, the opera has enchanted the public with its sumptuous lyricism, bounding spirit and deep pathos.
Based on the quasi-autobiographical writings of French bohemian Henri Murger, the story centers on four young and carefree souls (a poet, a painter, a philosopher and a musician) and the women two of them love (a seamstress and a cabaret singer).
The opera is performed in Italian with English supertitles.