Bohemians Trash Salzburg Home as Netrebko Hits High Notes

Rodolfo is a filmmaker living in student squalor, sleeping on a mattress on the floor in Damiano Michieletto’s cinematic “La Boheme” at the Salzburg Festival.

He and his friends fight over the one armchair and squander what little money they get. A huge steamed-up window with raindrops trickling down serves as the melancholy backdrop. When Rodolfo falls in love, a giant hand projected onto the window writes “Mimi” in the condensation. As she dies in the final act, the hand writes the name again, then wipes it out for good.