PBS Announces GREAT PERFORMANCES "La Boheme" Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Opera's Golden Couple, Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon, Star in Puccini Favorite

The pairing of one of the most beloved operas of all time with a contemporary "dream team" of singers sets the stage for a romantic silver screen blockbuster. Released theatrically in October, the lush new film version of "La Boheme" makes its U.S. television debut on GREAT PERFORMANCES during the holiday season - a perfect fit, given that the first two acts of the plot unfold on Christmas Eve. "My principal motivation in filming the opera 'La Boheme' is to set a memorial to the singers Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon," says Austrian director Robert Dornhelm, adding, "I think that this film, this music, this story will beguile not just opera lovers."

GREAT PERFORMANCES viewers will remember Netrebko and Villazon from last season's telecast of "Three Stars in Vienna" with superstar tenor Placido Domingo, as well as Netrebko's starring appearances on GREAT PERFORMANCES AT THE MET ("I Puritani," "Romeo et Juliette" and "Lucia di Lammermoor"). Now, the two bring their onstage chemistry to American television viewers when GREAT PERFORMANCES "La Boheme" airs in HD on Wednesday, December 23, 2009, 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET.

A stellar review in Opera News raves: "It's probably fair to say that this Boheme is one of the best filmic realizations of an opera since Francesco Rosi's 1984 Carmen. Although the entire production was filmed within the confines of studio sound-stages, it is very much a movie, rather than an embalmed theater presentation. [The] camera sweeps the viewer right into the center of the action with decisive tracking shots and intimate close-ups; languid dissolves, superimpositions and subtle split-screen effects emphasize the sensuality of the plot, and of Puccini's score."

Discussing the differences between live performance and film, Netrebko remarks, "...the camera is very intimate. It's coming really close to you. Your expressions ... the eyes opening, the mouth, it's reduced here to minimal. But instead of that, you have to put a lot inside your eyes, so you have the expression inside yourself."

Dornhelm is an Oscar nominee for The Children of Theater Street and more recently directed "Karajan, or Beauty as I See It," which aired on GREAT PERFORMANCES in August 2009, offering a fascinating career retrospective of the great conductor Herbert von Karajan on the occasion of his 100th birthday.