La Boheme

War Memorial Opera House
301 Van Ness Ave. San Francisco

Puccini's story of love, loss and the artistic world of 19th-century Paris comes to vibrant life in an exciting new production from the San Francisco Opera, featuring strikingly designed sets and costumes, not to mention a bevy of brilliant singers, under the direction of Tony winner John Caird, director of two of the biggest stage hits of recent years, Les Misérables and Nicholas Nickleby. Puccini's most famous opera, La Bohème, follows Rodolfo -- a struggling poet -- and Mimi --a shy seamstress -- as they meet and fall in love, despite the hardscrabble existence of life in the city's Latin Quarter. Financial woes, jealous exes and Mimi's increasingly worrisome sickness drive a dramatic plot filled with sensual arias that continues to resonate more than 100 years after the opera's premiere.