My new backup career

Papa Bossy plays the oboe in his local concert band, as well as designing the posters, serving on the board, and various other volunteer duties. The band is getting ready for their annual holiday concert, for which they're importing a soprano with local roots who now lives in Vienna. Along with some holiday favorites, she's also singing 3 arias from Bohème, so Papa Bossy emailed me to get some "dramaturgical notes or context" for the arias. Here's what I sent back today:

"Si, mi chiamano" is Mimi's first aria. She has AIDS, and she has just dropped her drug stash at Rodolfo's house, and she sings this so he will light her candle....oh, wait, that's not right, that's Rent. Let me start over. Mimi is Rodolfo's neighbor, and she comes because her candle has blown out. She ends up dropping her key, and he picks it up and doesn't tell her. Then he sings all about himself and her cold hand, and asks her to tell him about herself. The aria is her doing that. Turns out Mimi is an alias, and her real name is Lucia. No one knows why, including her. She embroiders flowers for a living, but she has the soul of poet. Coincidentally, so does Rodolfo, mostly because he is a poet, so obviously they live happily after.

Except they don't. She sings "Donde lieta" in the third act, after she finds out by accident that she is very sick and dying. Basically, she is saying goodbye to Rodolfo. Quite a bit of the aria is taken up with practical matters, like how she's going to get all her crap out of his apartment (these things are always so awkward), and where she left her pink bonnet (on his pillow, inexplicably), but the overwhelming theme of the aria (made clear by lots of repetition) is "Addio, senza rancor." I think you know what that means.

"Quando men vo" is, of course, sung by a completely different character, Musetta. She is in an on again, off again romance with Rodolfo's BFF Marcello. This aria is sung during one of the off times, Act II. She has brought her sugar daddy with her to Marcello's favorite restaurant to make Marcello jealous. When it doesn't work she sings this aria, all about how beautiful she is and how everyone wants her. This does the trick, and right after the aria is done she and Marcello get back together. This, of course, lasts only until the end of Act III.

If the whole directing thing doesn't work out, I think I definitely have a future as a dramaturg, don't you?