Take four "lads", a poet, a painter, a philosopher and a musician, all idle, sharing a freezing garret and not a penny between them.
Pity the poor landlord when he shows up looking for the rent. None of them look like potential husband material either, but then Mimi is the sort of a girl who can't even keep a flame in her candle.
Puccini's most popular opera, La Boheme, moved forward in time, from the Bohemian Paris of 1830 to the rather more cynical one of 1968 student radicalism and drugs at the weekend in the romantic period garden setting of Loughcrew, Co Meath.
True to the tale, the cast convincingly shivered in winter jackets and fingerless gloves.
The audience, however, sweltered in surreal summer heat, the best weather in the seven-year history of Loughcrew Garden Opera, had arrived. There was even a swoon or two and several attempts at gracefully fanning oneself.
Once the audience got over the shock of heat and no rain, it began to enjoy a summer evening worthy of Paris itself.
Instead of storming the red-ceiling tent to take their seats, men and women drifted in, reluctant to leave the garden, the new moon, the gossip and the posing - seldom have so many operagoers felt so inclined to photograph each other.
The 1960s dress code was open to interpretation. Loughcrew host Charlie Naper had decided on a pirate look. Tuxedos and evening frocks were favoured by the majority, while the more daring opted for an historic, short square almost geometrical look once pioneered by, as a woman in long white plastic boots and hair that she had "ironed" informed us, "Mary Quant".
Interestingly, the best dressed man went to a Puccini look-a-like or perhaps he was supposed to be Proust? The best dressed woman was a vintage 60s swinger in a backless mini dress.
If fashion dictated off stage, on stage the emphasis was initially on having a good time.
The "lads" seemed ready to watch the World Cup, had they a television. La Boheme opens as an almost conversational romp. All seems well as soon as the equivalent of a takeaway appears, well wine and a sausage, and once Marcello (the always excellent Colin Campbell), Schaunard and Colline have chased off the landlord, they exit leaving Rodolfo to the business of writing poetry.
Far from looking like the regulation sensitive poet, this relaxed looking tenor had the robust physique of an out of shape rugby player guaranteed not to be able to deal with Mimi's consumption.
Their first meeting goes better than well. Rodolfo is in love and Mimi, sung by Gordana Kostic, a serious looking soprano whose face and voice suggest deeper things than hanging out with a struggling poet, looks, for the moment, slightly less worried. Act two offers the great set piece in the cafe.
Musetta, sung by the vivacious Irish soprano Michele Sheridan, is intent on showing her old boyfriend how life, or at least one's wardrobe may improve with the securing of a rich admirer.
When taking Puccini's lyric opera out of its period, Opera A La Carte artistic director Nicholas Heath also decided to impose some modern twists, this 1960s Mimi suffers from self-imposed health problems.
Aside from the famous hacking cough, in this production she is also a drug scene casualty.
The small orchestra battled with a tricky score, as after the interval spent eating, the romance resumed as a melodrama with Mimi's decline.
Later, outside the tent, audience members attempted a couple of the duets. They didn't quite sound the same.
"Save it for the bath," suggested some concerned onlookers.
