Lyric Opera 2024-2025 Issue 7 - La bohème

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 28 colorful, unexpected lining, as well as the plunging neckline of her red and white printed dress. The fact that she is alone with a frothy beer on the table suggests that she is a performer, and possibly a woman on the prowl for clients. Reinforcing this second explanation are the slender sylph-like women slipping between the trees in the background, their predatory nature even more pronounced. These are truly ladies of the night in search of their next protector/victim, representing as much the prostitute as the femme fatale that would be a highly popular theme for symbolist art and literature at the turn of the century. Mimì and Musetta, too, are products of the male imagination, and the numerous ambiguities in the paintings adhere to the sopranos as well. Are they really victims? Clearly, they did not choose their lifestyle, but did they not benefit from the advantages it provided? Although we are not given any information on Mimì’s past, we know she is a good girl whose youth, beauty, and availability help her to subsidize her meager income as a seamstress. In fact, the complications of her life stem not from her work either as a needleworker or prostitute, but from the circumstances of poverty and, of course, her medical condition. It is consumption that defeats her rather than her membership in the popular classes. On the other hand, she is not without agency. In financial distress, she seeks recourse in males, like Rodolfo, leaving us to speculate whether her chance encounter over a blown out candle and dropped keys, causing Rodolfo to touch her cold, little hand and thus ignite the romance that temporarily saves her, is a true coincidence or part of a calculated flirtation. No matter how poor, the male bohemian was never as destitute and vulnerable as the single female. Males could hang out in public, alone or with friends, and not be suspected by the police for their overt sexuality; and they would always have male fraternity to fall back on, which Puccini makes clear in the raucous antics of the artists of the ateliers and cafés. Never completely alone, a male bohemian could be single and poor but never without resources, and never as destitute as those like Mimì. The triumph of La Bohème resides in how Puccini detours from the visual detachment and subtlety so important to the artists discussed here (Forain excepted). Though Rodolfo becomes Mimì’s enabler, encouraging her mission to seduce a wealthy benefactor, he is also genuinely smitten. Their story, set against the dream of artistic freedom, is also a realistic tale of the inequalities between men over women — inequalities present in the worlds of painting, literature, and opera alike; love conquers, for a time, but is defeated by the rules of society, which work against them. Indeed, this unforgettable work of art is ultimately inspired by the darker side of bohemian culture — a tragedy rather than a rhapsody. Gloria Groom is the Chair and Winton Green Curator for Painting and Sculpture of Europe at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her current exhibition and catalogue, Gustave Caillebotte: Painting his World , in collaboration with the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and the Getty Museum, opens at the Art Institute in June. At the Moulin Rouge by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,1892/95