PUCCINI: Boheme (La) (PAL)

Giacomo PUCCINI (1858-1924)

La Bohème

Cheryl Barker, David Hobson, Roger Lemke, Christine Douglas, Gary Rowley, David Lemke, Opera Australia Chorus, Ballet and Orchestra, Julian Smith

Production Director: Baz Luhrmann

PAL 100 954

Running Time: 113 minutes
Picture Format: 4:3
Sound: PCM Stereo
Region Code: PAL 2, 5
Menu Languages: GB, D, F SP
Subtitles: I, GB, D, F SP
Recording Date: 1993

Recorded live from the Sydney Opera House, this Australian Opera production of Puccini's perennial favourite was staged by the creative team who made the hit film Strictly Ballroom - 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.

This Bohème throbs with passion and its vivid feeling of reality serves to make the story even more poignant:

"Luhrmann is not afraid as a director to embrace the much-derided concepts of love and romance and run with them. Rather than overly complicate matters, he exposes and then celebrates the simplicity of the material." Star Observer