La Bohème - San Francisco Opera

Bohemians in Paris, 1830
Paris in 1830 was a hub of revolutionary activity. The French had overthrown their
monarch, Louis XVI, in 1789, but four decades later, the monarchy still existed in an
uneasy truce with the constitutional government, and the populace was vocal in their
complaints. The liberal press was attacking the government, and one of these papers, the
National, was devoting a series to the English revolution of 1688.
Amidst all the shouting, there was another almost parallel revolution brewing within
the artist community of the Latin Quarter. The Quarter was home to some of the most
significant young artists of their generation and perhaps the century: the playwrights/
novelists Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Emile Deschamps, and George Sand, composers
Hector Berlioz and Frédéric Chopin, actress Marie Dorval, and painter Eugène Delacroix,
among others.
Dumas and Hugo were creating theatre that was completely at odds with the rigidly
prescribed, dusty style of presentation that had reigned for years at the Théatre Français.
In 1827, the financial weakness of the theatre allowed the young playwrights to gain entry;
managers hoped to regain tickets sales by producing the work of these brash and
controversial young artists. The plays Hugo and Dumas were creating, however, did more
than bring in audiences; they presented the public with a revitalized view of the world. The
combination of realism and melodrama, and the progressively naturalistic acting style
challenged the status quo and brought the Latin Quarter to life. Audiences showed up for
free tickets dressed in "medieval doublets, in sweeping Rubens hats, in mysterious Spanish
cloaks, in anything except the current fashion." 1
That same spring, Alexandre Dumas' play, Christine, had its opening at the Odeon.
Dumas' father had been the son of a West Indian slave and a French marquis and had
become a general under Napoleon. Dumas himself was both a dashing lady's man and an
extraordinarily talented writer with revolutionary leanings. His revolutionary activity was
both artistic and political, and when the impending revolution finally sparked, in May of
1830, he was in the middle of it. At one point he even made a dangerous dash into the
royalist district of Soisson to capture gun powder for the revolutionary forces.
1 The Young Romantics, by Linda Kelly. Published by Random House, New York 1976
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