The cultural and artistic course of Puccini's La Boheme has transformed the detainees of Maiano Prison in Spoleto into the protagonists of design and making of the production for a 1977 Paris edition as opposed to the original project of 1830. After having listened, interiorised and come to love the Opera, they decided to design the settings and costumes first as models and then in real size together with the Mountjoy prisoners. One does not have to be a cultured opera devotee to appreciate the overwhelming impact of Puccini's music. The libretto is drawn from novel from Henry Murger "Scenes de la vie de Boheme" which stresses its literary and narrative power. But Boheme above all – as all melodrama – emphasizes wretched protagonists, artists in our case, belonging to needy social classes in striking contrast to the well-to-do.
This birth and often human destiny is a confined social fringe becomes metaphor of captivity from which, even with Boheme, one can escape.

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