5 pop offshoots of La Bohme, from Rent to The Simpsons

Giacomo Puccinis La Bohme is often touted as the world's most popular opera. Its romantic, its tragic and its got stunning music everything you want in an opera. The Canadian Opera Companys new co-production (with Houston Grand Opera and San Francisco Opera) of La Bohme opens the company's season tonight at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto. A brief taste from the dress rehearsal is in the attached video.

• CBC Music: What makes Puccinis La Bohme the worlds most popular opera?

La Bohme's plot holds no surprises for opera fans: young bohemians in 1840s Paris make art, make love and live as though every breath was their last and alas, in one case, that turns out to be true. But even non-opera aficionados may find the tale familiar because its story and music have entered popular culture. Here are five pop creations that began with La Bohme.

Rent

Jonathan Larsons 1994 musical is based directly on the opera, transplanting the setting to New York City where a group of poor young artists struggle in the Lower East Side. The sinister disease that spells an end to La Bohmes Mimi (consumption) becomes HIV/AIDS in Rent. Its not just the plot thats similar, its also some of the music. Compare, for example Quando men vo (Musettas Waltz) from La Bohme, to the guitar solo (around 3:30) in Goodbye Love from Rent.

Dont You Know

Musettas Waltz was also adapted for Bobby Worths 1959 R&B hit Dont You Know, sung by Della Reese. It also wrings your heart, if in a string-laden, non-operatic (but still stirring) way. The song reached No. 2 on the U.S. pop charts and No. 1 on the U.S. R&B charts.

The Simpsons: The Homer of Seville

In The Homer of Seville episode of The Simpsons, when the director, founder and standing ovation starter of the Springfield Opera House hears Homer singing If Ever I Would Leave You (from the musical Camelot), he realizes Homer has a magnificent operatic voice. Though Homer can only sing while lying on his back, thats no impediment and he takes on the role of Rodolfo in La Bohme (He also doesn't shy from giving advice to real-life opera star Placido Domingo).

Baz Luhrmanns Moulin Rouge

In 2001, director Baz Luhrmann released a movie that people love to love (or hate): the frenetic Moulin Rouge. Its Bohemian artists in Paris took Truth, beauty, freedom, love,'' as their rallying cry, and swung from chandeliers to a soundtrack that included Lady Marmalade and The Hills Are Alive from The Sound of Music. Central is a character named Satine (Mimi), who is loved by Christian (Rodolfo) and dies of tuberculosis (consumption).

But years before, there was Luhrmanns 1990 Australian staging of La Bohme (which he set in the late 1950s). After the success of Moulin Rouge, Broadway staged his take on the opera classic and Luhrmann was enough of a mainstream figure that a scene even made it onto TV's Live with Regis and Kelly.

Moonstruck

In something of an opera within an opera, Cher beneath her crown of towering hair as the character Loretta in the movie Moonstruck realizes that even though she is at a production of La Bohme with Ronny (Nick Cage), yes, she really is engaged to his brother. What to do? Get teary while Mimis heart breaks, too.

And if you needed one more bit of proof that La Bohme is on the popular culture radar, look to that surefire indicator: the condensed version. The McSweeneys piece "The One-Minute, Non-Musical La Bohme for One or More Actors," by Meron Langsner, contains lines such as We are the poets! We are the painters! We are the unemployed and very poor. But still, we are bohemian. (pause) La.