Baz brings La Boheme to Broadway

Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann has moved to New York to prepare for his next project: a US$6.5 million ($14.65 million) Broadway theatre production of La Boheme, which will open in December. The Guardian newspaper reports that Baz' somewhat intense style is startling auditioning singers as he pursues them with a handheld video camera, barking "Action!' and "Cut!" Bringing a full opera to Broadway, where audiences prefer musicals, is a challenge - and there's nothing Luhrmann loves more. He is updating the Puccini tragedy to Paris 1957, and filling the cast with young sexy things who will have to invest as much in their acting as singing ability.

"The classic performance in the temples of opera with the incredible voices like Pavarotti, Domingo - that is something to be enjoyed because it's a huge pageant," says Luhrmann. "But you have to be a member of the club so you can decode it to enjoy it. I can, but there's a young audience out there who can't read the codes."

The production reprises a version that Luhrmann staged at the Sydney Opera House a decade ago, where the sign "L'Amour" presaged its later use in Moulin Rouge - which he and his wife, the Oscar-winning production designer Catherine Martin, plan to turn into a stage musical.