Santa Fe Opera opens 2025 season with 'La bohème'

Grab some tissues as the Santa Fe Opera season opens with the tragic love story, “La bohème.”

“La bohème” is an Italian opera set in 1920s Paris and is centered on the lives of six Bohemians.

Sylvia D’Eramo, who plays Mimì, finds that the audience needs to be open-minded when listening to an Italian opera set in Paris.

“It’s one of those interesting operas (with a) willing suspension of disbelief, a thing you have to do,” D’Eramo said. “We are in Paris, and we’re all French people, but it is an Italian opera.”

This will be D’Eramo’s third time in “La bohème,” where she has sang everything from the chorus in 2019 at the Santa Fe Opera to Musetta at the Metropolitan Opera.

“It’s such an interesting and amazing full-circle moment for me …” she said. “It’s this very heartwarming and touching and sort of beautiful experience for me to come back and get to be on the stage singing this amazing music that’s now been in my bones for so long.”

D’Eramo has played two of the titular roles in the show, as Musetta and Mimì, and she finds that she has had to prepare in different ways for them.

“(Musetta) has no inhibition, and you have to be sort of this spitfire out on stage and take charge. Whereas Mimì has this really delicate, vulnerable quality to her,” D’Eramo said. “So there are these different challenges of acting both. Both demand a vulnerability in a way, but different kinds of vulnerability.”

D’Eramo has performed at the Santa Fe Opera before and finds it a unique experience.

“The elements is something to consider here in Santa Fe. So there’s sometimes rain and sometimes wind,” D’Eramo said. “You have to figure out how to manage all that and stay focused on the music when the elements are sort of trying to make music with you.”

D’Eramo says that the outside elements help her connect to her character, Mimì, who loves the outdoors.

“There’s moments where she sings of the birds singing and the flowers blooming,” D’Eramo said. “When I’m outside rehearsing, and I can smell flowers on the breeze and hear birds chirping in the rafters, half my job is done. It creates this magical set for me.”

“La bohème” opens on Friday, June 27, and runs until Aug. 23.