Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, Hei- Kyung Hong, Marcelo Álvarez & Roberto Servile
Teatro Alla Scala, Bruno Bartoletti
Directed and Set Design by Franco Zeffirelli
Arthaus presents a recording of a marvelous opera production from Milan on DVD. Franco Zefffirelli staged Puccini’s masterpiece La Bohème with international opera stars in a set true to the touching story of Mimì and Rodolfo. These are wonderfully portrayed by Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, recognized as one of the top lyric sopranos with an expressive voice and vivid stage presence, and Marcelo Álvarez, hailed by critics as „one of the hottest tenors on the international scene“. Puccini’s opera about art and artists also touches the singers’ profession. Álvarez said of opera: “The audience wants authenticity. It wants a heavenly voice to make mistakes sometimes. It wants honest singers. But at the same time one must be able to step down off the stage and become an ordinary person again.” Role-playing and life, art and reality, are at the heart of La Bohème - what remains of the artists’ life and love at the end of the opera is the memory of them. “I love little things”, the composer Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) once said, “and I only can and want to make the music of little things, if they are true, passionate and human, and go to the heart.” The director Franco Zeffirelli is known for putting the real world on to the operatic stage in lavish sets and costumes. Yet by accumulating little things, by his virtuoso play with details, he built the cosmos of Puccini’s artists in La Bohème as a feast of little things, creating a world poised between poverty and beauty. This DVD shows how opera – the music, the acting, the singing and the staging - finds beauty and grace even in sorrow.
Sound Format: PCM STEREO
DD 5.1, DTS 5.1
DVD Format: DVD 9, NTSC
Picture Format: 16.9
Subtitle Languages: GB, DE, FR, ES, IT, CN
FSK: 0
Running Time: 134 mins
