Ah! Mimì, my fleeting youth!

Sunday July 22, 2007 witnessed the  inauguration of “Ah! Mimi mia breve gioventù” the exhibition in Viareggio that celebrates Puccini’s masterpiece.  The exhibition reconstructs the birth and glorious life of one of the most performed melodramas in the world, using the wonders of multimedia technology combined with a display of rare original documents from the Historical Ricordi Archives.

_{Maria Cristina Boncompagni,
Councillor for Culture for the City of Viareggio
Franco Moretti,
General Director of the Puccini Festival Foundation
Tino Cennamo,
President of Casa Ricordi
Manrico Nicolai,
President of the Puccini Festival Foundation.}

“Ah! Mimì mia breve gioventù” begins its journey in the world of Paris as recounted by Henry Murger in his novel “Scènes de la vie de Bohème”,  which inspired Pucccini and the opera “librettisti”.  The exhibition finishes with the enchanting set produced for the 2003 Festival.
Laid out on the three floors of Villa Borbone, the exhibit analyses the various crossovers of visual imagery between La Bohème and the 1934 scenery sketches of Carlo Carra, the cinema footage of King Vidor in 1926 and the set overseen by Franco Zeffirelli in 1963.

The final part of the exhibition is dedicated to the great Belgian artist Jean Michel Folon who recently passed away.   Here the visitor can see the set preparation of La Bohème, presented in 2003 by the Puccini Festival Foundation, directed by Maurizio Scaparro, under the Sculpting the Opera Project.  

The opening of the exhibition  coincides with the inauguration of the 53rd edition of the Puccini Festival at Torre del Lago, which opened on July 20, 2007 and runs until August 19.  This year, among the events in the summer program are Madame Butterfly, Tosca, La Bohème, and La Rondine.

The exhibition “Ah! Mimì mia breve gioventù” organized by the City of Viareggio Cultural Councillorship and by the Puccini Festival Foundation in conjunction with the Historical Ricordi Archives:
From Sunday July 22 until September 30, 2007 in the historic rooms and park of Villa Borbone in Viareggio.