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La Bohème has proven to be one of Portland Opera’s most historically significant productions. Giacomo Puccini’s opera was staged during the company’s inaugural 1964–65 season. It also opened the 1967–68 season, effectively bookending LBJ’s presidency amid the Vietnam War. Portland Opera’s La Bohème comes back during times of uncertainty across American history, like oil crises, terror attacks, and seismic presidential shifts. Both of Trump’s terms in office get La Bohème, now returning to the Keller Auditorium starting Nov. 15.
“I thought that was such an interesting coincidence,” says Portland Opera artistic director Alfrelynn Roberts about this historical timing. Roberts typically plans each season well in advance. When she prepared for Falstaff at the end of last season, in May 2025, she was already looking ahead to the 2026–27 season. Calamity clearly wasn’t on her mind.
“It’s one of the most accessible operas,” she says. “We were making intentional moves to make sure everyone has access to our art form.”
La Bohème first premiered in Turin, Italy, in 1896, as an adaptation of Henri Murger’s 1851 book Scènes de la vie de Bohème, depicting young and impoverished Parisian artists. Murger’s collection of short stories was quite personal; he based his character Rodolphe on himself, and Mimi was inspired by a real woman named Lucille. Decades later, Puccini revivified Murger’s material for the operatic stage, with his production serving to inspire updates even a century later, such as Jonathan Larson’s Rent and Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!
When Puccini first presented La Bohème, opera was shifting toward popular art instead of elite. Dr. Harry Baechtel, an associate professor of voice at Portland State University and a regular preshow lecturer at Portland Opera, notes in La Bohème’s program that this focus on “lower class, contemporary people and situations, their passions, their tragedies, their raw emotions, and their desperate decisions,” is a prime example of the verismo (“reality”) movement in Italian opera at the time.
Fitting this purpose of opera as the people’s house, Roberts says Portland Opera will partner with the nonprofit organization One Warm Coat for this production. “We’ll have boxes where people can bring coats, and specifically baby items too,” she says. “It ties into the story of La Bohème, of people not having enough shelter.” Donated coats will go to Dress for Success locally, and baby items will go to the nonprofit Mother and Child Education Center.
“It’s a perfect partnership,” says stage director and choreographer Cara Consilvio, linking it to “the beautiful aria about Rodolfo saying goodbye to his coat so he could buy Mimi medicine.”
Consilvio adds that while she doesn’t listen to much opera outside of her work, “I do listen to La Bohème. It’s not doomscrolling. It’s a balm for the soul. It’s timeless, for when I need to reset. It’s like coming home.” But it really is a homecoming, for Consilvio and Portland. Though she’s directed previous productions of La Bohème in Charlottesville, Va., and Grand Rapids, Mich., Consilvio was also an assistant on the 2017 Portland Opera production. “And some of our chorus is still here!” she says. “But it is a very different production, a completely different set.”
Unlike last season’s productions of The Shining and Falstaff, which used digitally projected backdrops from David Murakami, La Bohème instead uses a large physical set with detailed paint work. “Not many painters were trained in the style we’re using,” Consilvio says.
Matching this artistry with the lighting is an occasion to rise to, so the company hired Marcella Barbeau, who previously contributed to The Shining and to several Oregon Shakespeare Festival productions. “Marcie was on board when I came on,” Consilvio says. “She’d been on my radar for years as a lighting designer I wanted to work with.”
Asked what the young lovers Mimi and Rodolfo would do if they were here to see present-day Portland and all her protests, Roberts says, “I think they would be on the front lines, with all the animals, all the folks playing music.”
SEE IT: La Bohème at Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 503-248-4335, portland5.com/keller-auditorium. 7:30 pm Saturday, Nov. 15, and Friday, Nov. 21; 2 pm Sunday, Nov. 23. $31–$219.
