Campus News

UGA Opera Ensemble presents Puccini’s ‘La Bohème’

The UGA Opera Ensemble brings the Latin Quarter of 1840s Paris to campus in a one-night presentation of Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème Nov. 10 at 8 p.m. in the Hugh Hodgson Concert Hall.

Tickets for the performance, part of the Hugh Hodgson School of Music 2nd Thursday Scholarship Concert Series, are $18 or $5 for UGA students.

The Opera Ensemble, under the direction of Frederick Burchinal, the Wyatt and Margaret Anderson Professor in the Arts, will present La Bohème in a concert performance with costumes and sets. The ensemble will be accompanied by the UGA Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mark Cedel. The opera will be performed in Italian with surtitles.

Consistently ranked as one of the top five most popular operas, La Bohème is performed regularly all over the world. The accessibility of Puccini’s opera to the general public, first performed in Turin in 1896, has spawned a musical version known on Broadway as Rent.

The production features UGA students, Joseph Brent as the poet, Rodolfo; Josephine Delledera as the seamstress, Mimì; and Kelsey Fredriksen as the flirtatious singer, Musetta. The cast also includes Atlanta Opera baritone Brent Davis as the painter, Marcello. The story is focused on the loves between Rodolfo and Mimì, Marcello and Musetta and their struggles to reconcile artistic impulses with the realities of life.