Passionate music and drama come to the Merlin this week.
On Thursday 1st March, Puccini’s La Boheme, will be live on screen at 7pm, broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, while on Tuesday 6th March at 6.45pm, the theatre will be screening Carmen, direct from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
La Boheme, the world’s most popular opera, returns with an exciting young cast in Franco Zeffirelli’s legendary production. Poverty-stricken poet Rodolfo and his artist friends eke out a precarious existence in bohemian Paris, alternately practising their art, laughing, quarrelling, dodging the landlord, and living it up in their local cafe. When Rodolfo meets the delicate Mimì, the pair instantly fall in love. But Mimì is ill, Rodolfo is jealous, and their romance is doomed from the start.Opera superstars Sonya Yoncheva and Michael Fabiano play the heart-breaking couple, singing two sublime Puccini favourites “Sì, mi chiamano Mimì” and “Che gelida manina.” Zeffirelli’s stupendous onstage recreations of 19th-century Paris are sure to take your breath away.
Carmen is the best-known work by French composer Georges Bizet, and one of the most famous operas in the entire art form – numbers such as the Habanera and the Toreador Song have permeated the popular consciousness as little else has.
The opera’s heady combination of passion, sensuality and violence initially proved too much for the stage, and it was a critical failure on its 1875 premiere. Bizet died shortly after, and never learned of the spectacular success his Carmen would achieve; the opera has been performed more than 500 times at Covent Garden alone.
This ever-popular opera is given a fresh point of view in Barrie Kosky’s highly physical production, originally created for Frankfurt Opera. The Australian director is one of the world’s most sought-after opera directors, whose Royal Opera debut with Shostakovich’s The Nose in 2016 was greeted with delight. For Carmen he has devised a far-from-traditional version, incorporating music written by Bizet for the score but not usually heard, and giving a new voice to the opera’s endlessly fascinating central character.
Tickets for both shows are £16.