Slowly navigating around the crowded entrances and herds of people, I was hit with a view of red stairs and high ceilings. I stood in awe, admiring the elegant setting around me as my friends around me scrambled for their phones to capture the view. After we took our photos of the long chandeliers amongst the glass paneled wall along with everything else the Opera house had to offer, we began making our way to our seats. As I gripped the velveted handlebars, I climbed the stairs up to the top floor and entered the left set of doors. My friends and I quickly took our seats in row F and patiently waited for La Boheme to begin. The lights began to dim and the conductor took his place in the brightly illuminated white box. Before I knew it, I was entering an opera world that was different than everything I expected to be.
“Opera”- hearing these words came out of my teacher’s mouth was anything but excitement for me. I connotated this word with nothing more than the same instruments playing repetitive tunes for hours accompanied by singers, who drew out their syllables and words. Watching La Boheme proved everything that I thought operas were to be wrong. La Boheme was more than just some instruments and singers, there was a captivating storyline mixed with extreme drama. Although the play did become mundane and dragged out during some scenes, the storyline was intriguing and told a not-so-cliche love story. Having taken place in Paris after the revolution, the main characters, Mimi and Marcello portrayed struggling artists who were distressed from finding sufficient income to survive. Despite the compelling love story, the characters shared, playwright Giacomo Puccini also revealed the struggles that mainstream faced due to the rising power of the bourgeoisie, which included the inability to pay for rent and finding money to take care of personal health. The mixture of struggles of minor and major characters forced me to feel sympathy and grow some sort of emotional bond with these characters. One aspect of the play that hindered me from being fully engaged in the play was that the play was in a different language. Although there was a small screen in front of me that projected the English translation, my eyes strained from reading from it for hours. Furthermore, my inability to understand what the singers sang took away from my experience because I would not fully comprehend the emotions and tones that the singers tried to portray.
Compared to the movie Rent, which was a modern take on La Boheme, I definitely felt like it was more relatable and captivating. Taking place in a time frame more recent and relevant to me, I felt more connected to the characters. The diversity of the characters also made the movie more emotionally provoking for me. Throughout La Boheme, I could not help but draw connections between the two. The scene that stood out the most was the candle scene, where Mimi’s candle goes out.
Overall, La Boheme had exceeded my expectations of an opera and helped me redefine what an opera was to me. It did lose my attention at different moments of the play, but the story was definitely very interesting and the different backgrounds were unbelivable and intricate. This was definitely a memorable experience from the moment I stepped into the Opera house.
