For more than a hundred years, singers have brought to life the story of young, impoverished Parisians living a bohemian life as told in the famous opera "La bohème" by Giacomo Puccini.

Yale opera students will continue that tradition by staging the romantic classic -- one of the most popular operas of all time -- Friday-Sunday, Jan. 28-30, at the Shubert Theater, 247 College St.

Performances will be at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. on Sunday. The opera will be sung in Italian with English supertitles.

Puccini's opera, set in Paris around 1830, centers on the love affair of the poet Rodolfo and the solitary, sickly Mimi, an embroiderer. The two pursue their tumultuous relationship -- which ends in heartbreak -- surrounded by their friends, including the quarrelsome couple Marcello and Musetta. The opera inspired the recent Broadway hit "Rent."

Joshua Major, who recently staged Victor Ullmann's "The Kaiser from Atlantis" at Yale, will direct the performances. Anton Coppola, a longtime opera conductor, will lead the Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale in the Shubert production. Also instrumental in bringing the production to fruition is Doris Yarick Cross, artistic director of Yale Opera.

Major made his directing debut in 1985 and has since worked with opera companies throughout North America. Among the more than 80 opera productions he has directed are "The Marriage of Figaro," "Don Giovanni," "Romeo and Juliet," "Rigoletto," "The Pearl Fishers," "La Cenerentola," "Eugene Onegin" and "Faust." Major is a stage director at the Israel Vocal Arts Institute each summer in Tel Aviv.

Coppola has conducted most of the major opera companies in the United States and Canada, as well as the world premieres of "Lizzie Borden," "Deseret," "Of Mice and Men" and many Broadway musicals. He directed both the symphony and opera departments at the Manhattan School of Music for 15 years. Last season, he directed the Yale Opera production of Verdi's "Falstaff." He appeared as a conductor and opera consultant in "Godfather III," a film by his nephew, Francis Ford Coppola, and conducted the score for "Bram Stoker's Dracula," another film by his nephew. Also a composer, he is currently writing an opera titled "Sacco and Vanzetti," based on the famous criminal trial of the 1920s.

Tickets for "La bohème" are $16, $27 and $35. Tickets may be purchased at the Shubert box office or by calling Advantix at 1-800-228-6622.

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