Arizona Opera could have one of its fullest houses since the pandemic on Saturday for its one and only Tucson performance of Puccini’s “La Bohéme” as it opens its 2024-25 Main Stage series.
“La Bohéme” is the first of three productions the company will mount through September.
“The houses that we’ll have both in Phoenix and Tucson are some of the fullest we’ve had in years,” Arizona Opera Executive Director Joseph Specter said last week, days before “La Bohéme” opened at Symphony Hall in downtown Phoenix. “And it’s wonderful to look at the floor of the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall and see all of those seats filled.”
As the 2023-24 season wrapped last spring, the company announced sweeping changes to its upcoming season that included reducing productions from four to three and launching its “Beyond Downtown” series of performances held in non-traditional spaces including parks.
But the biggest change was reducing performances in Tucson from Saturday night and Sunday afternoon to a single 2 p.m. Saturday performance.
“Just to speak the obvious, certainly our aspiration is to grow programming again over a period of time,” said Specter, who announced in July plans to leave his position at the end of this season. “Our goal in this day and age is to figure out how we can meaningfully deliver on our mission as effectively as possible, reaching as many people as we can and as responsibly as we can within the financial constraints.”
From left, tenor SeokJong Baek (Rodolfo) and soprano Caitlin Gotimer (Mimì) in a scene from Arizona Opera’s production of Puccini’s “La Bohéme.” There is one Tucson performance at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall at 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1.
Saturday’s performance of Puccini’s perennial fan-favorite “La Bohéme” comes exactly five years to the day that the company performed it last in 2020.
“La Bohéme” takes place in early 19th century Paris in an apartment that’s home to a handful of struggling, penniless artists who can’t afford to buy a candle to keep the place lit much less fuel to keep warm.
“That joyfulness of youth, the way that it’s captured so beautifully, dramatically and musically by Puccini, you know this Bohemian life,” Specter said. “Who hasn’t had some version of that in their own life, right? You might not have done it in Paris, and you might not have been a poet or a painter, but who hasn’t had that moment of time when they felt their spirit was just, you know, totally free and released.”
The opera is centered on the tragic love story between the young poet Rodolfo and Mimì, a penniless seamstress in the final stages of terminal tuberculosis.
“I think it’s just so powerfully drawn. Whether you’ve experienced a moment of loss like that in your life or not, there is something just so incredibly cathartic and wonderful about the way that that story is brought to life so truthfully and so powerfully,” Specter said, praising Puccini’s music that “just fills your heart through the entire thing.”
“La Bohéme,” part of the 2025 Tucson Desert Song Festival, features an impressive cast, Specter said, including soprano and Marion Roose Pullin Arizona Opera Studio alum Caitlin Gotimer making her role debut as Mimì.
“She has this incredibly beautiful, full Italianate voice, and her sense of phrasing just brings the pathos of Mimì to life in such a beautiful way,” said Specter, who met his wife Kate when both sang in a production of “La Bohéme” in 2000.
Tenor SeokJong Baek, making his role debut as Rodolfo, returns to Arizona Opera several years after making his company debut in “Tosca.”
“I’m so happy to make my role debut in Arizona,” he said. “I thought this role would be very challenging because it’s a bit higher than other particular roles like Tosca. It fits my voice.”
Specter praised the entire cast including Arizona Opera Studio members bass-baritone Peter Barber and baritone Yichen Xue; soprano Emma Marhefka; and critically-acclaimed baritone Gordon Hawkins, who now teaches at Arizona State University.
Saturday’s performance begins at 2 p.m. at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. Tickets are $45-$215 through azopera.org.
The performance runs 2½ hours with one 30-minute intermission.
