La Boheme

Four young artists — a poet, a painter, a philosopher, a musician — are sharing a drafty Paris garret and running out of money. When the poet Rodolfo meets Mimì, a seamstress from next door, they fall for each other with the urgency of people who have nothing to lose. What Mimì doesn't tell him is that she is dying of tuberculosis, and has been for some time. Puccini's score moves between laughter and grief with unnerving ease — the opera that opens with practical jokes ends with one of the most devastating death scenes in all of theater. Franco Zeffirelli's production has been at the Met for over forty years, and its scale — the garrets, the café, the snow — is exactly right for a story this large. A roster of today's leading sopranos shares the role of Mimì across the run, each bringing something different to opera's most famous farewell.