Video: Making Snow for Met Opera's LA BOHÈME

The snowfall in Act III of Franco Zeffirelli’s staging of Puccini’s La Bohème is one of the most breathtaking moments on the Met stage. Go behind the scenes and watch how the Met Stagehands make the magic happen.

Four brilliant casts take the stage as Puccini’s lovesick young bohemians in Franco Zeffirelli’s picturesque production. Sopranos Ailyn Pérez, Eleonora Buratto, Kristina Mkhitaryan, and Corinne Winters alternate as the delicate seamstress Mimì, and tenors Dmytro Popov, Matthew Polenzani,  and Joseph Calleja share the role of the enamored poet Rodolfo. Maestros Kensho Watanabe, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Alexander Soddy, and Riccardo Frizza take the podium for performances throughout the season.

The libretto sets the action in Paris, circa 1830. This is not a random setting, but rather reflects the issues and concerns of a particular time when, following the upheavals of revolution and war, French artists had lost their traditional support base of aristocracy and church. The story centers on self-conscious youth at odds with mainstream society—a Bohemian ambience that is clearly recognizable in any modern urban center. La Bohème captures this ethos in its earliest days.

Lyrical and touchingly beautiful, the score of La Bohème exerts an immediate emotional pull. Many of its most memorable melodies are built incrementally, with small intervals between the notes that carry the listener with them on their lyrical path. This is a distinct contrast to the grand leaps and dives that earlier operas often depended on for emotional effect. La Bohème’s melodic structure perfectly captures the “small people” (as Puccini called them) of the drama and the details of everyday life.

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