2025 OPERA STUDIES

Vero Beach Opera & Vero Beach Museum of Art present: "La bohème and Puccini - the search for a libretto," a special lecture by Vero Beach Opera's master of ceremonies Ian Campbell on March 2, 2025 at 2:30 pm at the Vero Beach Museum of Art's Leonhardt Auditorium.

This lecture is in support of the Vero Beach Museum of Art’s exhibit French Moderns: Monet to Matisse, 1850-1950 which runs February 1 through June 22, 2025.

Is Mimì the sweet innocent girl we discover in Puccini’s La bohème or does she have a racier past which the composer largely ignores?

And when she enters Rodolfo’s room for the first time, does she faint from climbing the stairs, or is it because she chokes on the smoke from the poet’s laudanum-filled pipe?

In this talk, Ian Campbell shows how Puccini and his librettists created an opera by sifting through Henry Murger’s Scènes de la vie de Bohème, which chronicles the adventures of four Bohemians as they struggle to survive in 1840s Paris. They combined characters, changed situations, ignored less-attractive personal traits, and gave the world a beloved classic.

With musical examples showing the beauty of this opera and how Puccini even incorporated music from his student days to marvelous effect, the search for a libretto will hold more than a few surprises, even for those who know the opera well.

LECTURE TICKETS AVAILABLE SOON THROUGH THE MUSEUM'S WEBSITE.
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