PUCCINI’S LA BOHÈME
A SHORT GUIDE TO A GREAT OPERA
The opera and its composer
Who’s who and what’s what
The interval: talking points
Act by act
THE OPERA AND ITS COMPOSER
The image of ‘Bohemians’1, students and their grisettes living in attics in the Latin Quarter of Paris, was established around 1850 by the writer Henry Mürger2 whose series of sketches, ‘Scènes de la vie de bohème’, was based on his personal experience of bohemian life.
Mürger might have been lost to history had not Puccini half a century later transmuted him into Mimì’s lover Rodolfo. La Bohème has remained one of the most popular operas. For many theatres, it is ‘an old standby’, which has been sung by all the star tenors and sopranos of Italian opera. There is a tendency for celebrities to regard themselves as the attraction rather than the opera, but arguably that is preferable to the focus being on the production itself.
Puccini created La Bohème with immense skill and artistry, using an unlikely and quarrelsome pair of librettists: one a former sailor, the rough, republican, quick-working Luigi Illica, who produced the structure and first draft; the other, the smoother socialite, the very highly regarded poet and playwright Giuseppe Giacosa, a perfectionist who painstakingly versified and polished it.
This ‘Holy Trinity’ (as the music publisher Giulio Ricordi called them) had been involved in Puccini’s first big-hitting production, Manon Lescaut. After La Bohème, they went on to create Tosca and Madama Butterfly. Their stormy relationship was exacerbated when Illica suggested that versification was of no relevance in a libretto; Giacosa, on the other hand, was infuriated by Puccini’s endless refinements and changes as the work progressed. At one stage, Giacosa threatened to pull out of the project. Shortly thereafter, it was Illica’s turn to explode. ‘Illica should calm down,’ said Puccini. Acts 3 and 4 proved particularly intractable, and Giacosa again offered to disclaim responsibility and waive any remuneration.
Toscanini conducted the première at the Teatro Regio in Turin on 1 February 1896. This was the third anniversary of Manon Lescaut, and around seven weeks after Puccini had finished composing. The public liked the opera, but the critics were ‘decidedly hostile’ at first. The realism of the subject matter may have been too hard to swallow.
Puccini’s initial feeling of mortification was premature. The production ran well and a subsequent performance in Palermo was prolonged by encores beyond 1am; by then, half the orchestra had left, the cast had changed out of most of their clothes, Rodolfo had removed his wig and Mimì’s hair was all over the place. The conductor decided to repeat the whole of the last scene.
La Bohème became very popular indeed. People started calling their babies Mimi. King George V told the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham that it was his favourite opera, because it was the shortest one he knew. It is now at the top of ‘the charts’. Indeed, before the time of the long-running, highly marketed West End musical, the number of performances of La Bohème was probably the highest ever attained by any serious stage work, including plays.
When Puccini was secretly working away on La Bohème, he discovered that his contemporary Ruggero Leoncavallo, the composer of Pagliacci, was also composing an opera based on the same sketches and its dramatised version. The two composers had a blazing row in a Milan café and this was followed by announcements in separate newspapers that each was working on the same opera. Puccini’s blunt response was, ‘Let him compose. I shall compose, and the public will judge.’ Leoncavallo’s version premièred fifteen months after Puccini’s and at first was actually the more popular of the two.
Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) came from a musical family in Lucca, a city in Tuscany. He himself experienced the ‘Vie de Bohème’ when a student at the Milan Conservatoire. The prominent Milanese music publisher Giulio Ricordi brought him together with his librettists Luigi Illica (1857–1919) and Giuseppe Giacosa (1847–1906).
Puccini modelled himself on Massenet, France’s most popular composer, a mass-producer of pleasing operas including Manon. Puccini’s first successful opera was in 1893, also based on Abbé Prévost’s novel, Manon Lescaut.
At a time when the operatic heir to Verdi was being sought, the music critic and writer Bernard Shaw thought that Puccini, with his catching melodies, was the likely candidate. His main rivals, Mascagni and Leoncavallo, the composers of Cavalleria rusticana and I Pagliacci respectively, lacked sustainability.
La Bohème (1896) was followed by Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904), La Fanciulla del West (1910), and Turandot. La Rondine (1917) and Il Trittico (1918) were less remunerative.
Puccini was a chain-smoker, who lived a ‘fast’ life and chased women. He eventually settled down with Elvira, who could only be married once her husband, a schoolfriend of the composer, had died. Elvira was possessive and jealous, and hounded one of the household servants, with whom she thought Puccini was having an affair. This was Doria Manfredi, who had joined Puccini’s household five years earlier, aged sixteen. She committed suicide, and Puccini and Elvira had to settle a very difficult lawsuit relating to Elvira’s behaviour.
Puccini’s great hobby was shooting birds, especially on nearby Lake Massaciuccoli near his villa, quite close to Lucca. He also had a passion for high-speed motor cars and was lucky to survive, with just a broken leg, a crash in which the car plunged down a 15ft embankment before turning over.
His unpatriotic attitude during the First World War made him unpopular. He developed throat cancer, and died in a Brussels clinic on 29 November 1924. Turandot was incomplete at the time of his death and was finished by Franco Alfano, a minor composer of operas. BACK
WHO’S WHO AND WHAT’S WHAT
The story below is based on the libretto. Certain directors may amend opera stories to suit their production.
It is Christmas time around 1830, in Paris. Rodolfo, a poet, Marcello, a painter, Colline, a philosopher, and Schaunard, a musician who is managing to make some money, live, in a rumbustious jolly male way, in a freezing garret. They are behin...