Product Description Recorded live at the Sydney Opera House, this Australian Opera production of Puccini's perennial favorite 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 opera in four acts features a libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica after Henry Murger's novel Scenes de la Vie de Boheme. In Italian with English subtitles. 112 minutes. Amazon.com It might be possible to know this La Bohème and not love it, but I have never met anyone who felt that way. "Oh yes," said a friend, "that's the good one where everybody is the right age." The youth and freshness of the singers are, in fact, major assets in this production. Youthful high spirits and vulnerability are delicately portrayed, with sharp contrasts between the Parisian bohemians' abject poverty and their carefree lifestyle. On DVD, La Bohème is the work where the competition is strongest. Solid arguments can be made for the staging of the Metropolitan Opera production or the vocal quality of the San Francisco production, but the Australian Opera offers the closest identification of performers with the characters they represent. The effect is usually touching, sometimes downright electrifying. For this production, the story is moved up to Paris in the 1950s. A veneer of existentialism, a sense of the absurd, can be detected in the young men's lifestyle, but the implicit message is that, even with electricity (e.g., a massive neon sign celebrating "L'Amour"), bohemian life in the 1950s was essentially unchanged from the 1830s. There are good performances throughout, particularly by David Hobson (Rodolfo) and Cheryl Barker (Mimi), and the direction of Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge) is outstanding. --Joe McLellan, ISBN13: 9786305639428 ISBN10: 6305639426 Material Type: dvdProduct Description Recorded live at the Sydney Opera House, this Australian Opera production of Puccini's perennial favorite 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 opera in four acts features a libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica after Henry Murger's novel Scenes de la Vie de Boheme. In Italian with English subtitles. 112 minutes. Amazon.com It might be possible to know this La Bohème and not love it, but I have never met anyone who felt that way. "Oh yes," said a friend, "that's the good one where everybody is the right age." The youth and freshness of the singers are, in fact, major assets in this production. Youthful high spirits and vulnerability are delicately portrayed, with sharp contrasts between the Parisian bohemians' abject poverty and their carefree lifestyle. On DVD, La Bohème is the work where the competition is strongest. Solid arguments can be made for the staging of the Metropolitan Opera production or the vocal quality of the San Francisco production, but the Australian Opera offers the closest identification of performers with the characters they represent. The effect is usually touching, sometimes downright electrifying. For this production, the story is moved up to Paris in the 1950s. A veneer of existentialism, a sense of the absurd, can be detected in the young men's lifestyle, but the implicit message is that, even with electricity (e.g., a massive neon sign celebrating "L'Amour"), bohemian life in the 1950s was essentially unchanged from the 1830s. There are good performances throughout, particularly by David Hobson (Rodolfo) and Cheryl Barker (Mimi), and the direction of Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge) is outstanding. --Joe McLellan, ISBN13: 9786305639428 ISBN10: 6305639426 Material Type: dvd , ISBN13: 9786305639428 ISBN10: 6305639426 Material Type: dvd