Freedom, youth, eccentricity, carefreeness: the term "bohemian" evokes a very particular lifestyle, an artist’s existence steeped in fantasy and love in all its forms. That being said, "Bohème" first describes a character "on the margins" – outside the codes and routines of bourgeois society. Thus, the protagonists of Puccini's La Bohème stand out both for their passionate extravagance and for the tragic fate that delivers them to the solitude of an isolated attic – an attic where one dies without leaving a trace. Tuberculosis, that disease once called "romantic" in the 19th century, punishes carefreeness and fragility: "the age when one loves is also the age when one dies," as they used to say.

The "diseases of love and death" have crossed the ages and haunted artists in their works. These diseases have always played an ambiguous role in collective consciousness, being both a source of fear and fascination. However, if there is one such disease still very present in contemporary minds, it is certainly HIV. It is through these points of similarity, and because the AIDS years were those of our generation, that we chose to set this production of La Bohème in the 1990s. It is in a space reminiscent of New York’s Factory that our opera will begin and end.

A high point of Warholian effervescence often described as "pop bohemia," the Factory here will present shades of Fassbinder and lighting inspired by the French New Wave. Our Puccinian Warhol, surrounded by figures like David Bowie, Anna Karina, and Godard, will be none other than Marcello, who will also be ill. For in this warehouse, death lurks and strikes those, like Mimi, who surrender to romanticism and love. If some wrote that "the consumptive is a victim of their behavior" in the 19th century, the marginalization of those with HIV a century later was merciless: this existence, pointed at, condemned for its sexual, artistic, and social freedom, will be photographed by Marcello throughout the drama, set in an ever-present winter. Perhaps one day we will discover his photographs in a Contemporary Art Museum: The Snowflakes of the Last Breaths?

​

Kristian Frédric

​

4 performances - Opéra de Nice

< 31.05 20:00
< 02.06 20:00
< 04.06 15:00
< 06.06 20:00