Sydney Opera House - 1993 Production

This DVD is a fully televised production of a 1993 performance of La Bohème, starring Cheryl Barker as Mimi, David Hobson as Rodolfo, Roger Lemke as Marcello and Christine Douglas as Musetta. I highly recommend this DVD to not only fans of the opera, but also to anyone who has not been fortunate enough to see a live performance. I purchased a copy of the DVD for this very reason, and I and absolutely fell in love with La Bohème during my very first viewing. Hobson is an amazing Rodolfo, Barker a tender Mimi, Douglas a playful Musetta and Lemke a powerful Marcello. My favourite moments were when Mimi and Rodolfo declare their love for each other under the stunning L'Amour sign, the highly entertaining Cafe Momus sequence, and the final exchange between the two lovers before they are tragically torn apart by Mimi's untimely demise.

The back of the DVD cover reads as follows: "Recorded live from the Sydney Opera House, this Australian Opera production of Puccini's perennial favorite was staged by the Academy Award-winning creative team who made the hit film Moulin Rouge - director Baz Luhrmann and designers Catherine Martin and Bill Marron. They have crafted a compelling and artful reworking of the opera, using the post-war privations of 1950s Paris as a convincing setting, and capturing, above all else, the youthfulness and intensity of the story with a raw sincerity. After the PBS showing of this recording, John J. O'Connor wrote in The New York Times, "Familiarity can breed ennui, but an occasional jolt of imaginative freshness can work wonders. Irresisible proof is available in this Boheme... Like the opera itself, Mr Luhrmann's interpretation is shamelessly and quite gloriously romantic. By the slow close of its final curtain, there will not, I assure you, be a dry eye in anybody's house... Watch this smashing production and be seduced all over again." The stars of this basically ensemble production are Cheryl Barker as Mimi and David Hobson, tall and handsome as a movie star, who plays Rodolfo with a flip, boyish carelessness that makes his love for Mimi all the more moving when he loses her. They are splendidly complemented by Christine Douglas and Roger Lemke in the parts of the good-hearted but flirtatious Musetta and her lover, Marcello. Rodolfo's other companions in the garret - David Lemke as the musician Schaunard, Gary Rowley as the philosopher Colline - are typical exuberant students. Julian Smith conducts Puccini's rich, eloquent score, and the dramatic vibrancy of Luhrmann's production makes some of the composer's finest moments, such as the very different tensions between the two pairs of lovers, emerge with moving clarity."