Go to hear the tenor, and stay to see it all, including the lively and entertaining 2nd Act before Mimi’s tragic end. Ps. Kudos too to Musetta, as well as to Mimi and all the garret-mates.

La Boheme was an emotional depiction of how in the end, nothing else matters other than the one to whom you've committed. Love those in your life well because one day, in the midst of millions of distractions...they may be no longer....and suddenly there is only emptiness and faith that some day things would return back to a state of normal.

The Opera Carolina performance of La Boheme was an excercise in cliches. Bring in mid-level artists and do minimal staging to let them pretend to act, preform the score in a perfunctory manner, senza rancor, and assume that the audience will swallow this yet-another-ho-hum performance hook line and sinker. And guess what? But the rapturous applause at the end, the audience did. Thus, as our knowledge of art keeps falling to lower levels of sophistication, so does the level of what an acceptable presentation is all about. We brought 6 friends with us, people who aren't regular goers, hoping that viewing a scintillating performance of this crowed pleasing verismo opera would turn them into raving fans. Alas, the tolerated it, but didn't love it. And so it goes.