It is Musetta, announcing that Mimi is gravely ill. What follows is one of the greatest denouements in tragic theater, sung or spoken. Seeing youth's immortality suddenly revoked, Rodolfo's friends pool their meager resources in a desperate effort to help Mimi. Largely out of respect for the opera's intrinsic spirit of youth, the stage director of this production, Mario Corradi, a 23-year veteran, is doing his first Boheme. While I've always been drawn to the music, I've been embarrassed and repelled by the sight of four singers in their 60s cavorting about in that garret, in the first and fourth acts.
Mature men acting like kids is pathetic.
And youth gives the play its honesty and its sweetness. Puccini knew exactly what he was doing, replies conductor Steven Mercurio. He wanted, one more time, to create the fever pitch of youth in order to set up the other side of the coin. For these young people, life's highs are so high. But then, wham, Musetta knocks on the door and that E minor chord comes down like something from another planet.