by Suzanne Martinucci
Consistently near the top of any list of most-performed operas in the world, La Bohème is the work that made Giacomo Puccini immortal. After a somewhat mixed reception at its premiere in 1896 – the public loved it, the critics didn’t—the opera has, for 126 years, maintained an enduring appeal, occasionally crossing the line between opera-lovers and general audiences, such as in Norman Jewison’s film Moonstruck.
I love the way the opera begins. We know that the opening music comes from the Capriccio Sinfonico, a piece Puccini composed years earlier while he was a student. Here it brings to mind someone energetically and determinedly—perhaps stamping the cold out of his feet—marching up all those stairs to the garret where Rodolfo and Marcello are working, sweeping all of us along.
Luc Robert as Rodolfo (foreground) and Justin Welsh as Marcello. Photo by Yves Renaud/Opéra de Montréal.
In 1893, when he began work on La Bohème, Puccini was 35 years old. Fresh off his breakthrough success with Manon Lescaut, he was Italian opera’s new star composer. Manon Lescaut fairly gushes with melodic inspiration, a pent-up passion released in an extravagance of tunes that fall all over each other trying to be heard. With his next opera, La Bohème, the melodic inspiration is just as strong, but distilled. It’s as if all of Puccini’s strengths had found their perfect vehicle: Henri Murger’s novel, Scènes de la vie de bohème. In his fourth opera, the composer found a subject that married his personal experience and gifts of melody to his innate theatricality.
I think Puccini tapped into a universal feeling, a nostalgia perhaps, about youth—its energy, passions, humor, and optimism, as well as the heartbreak of first love—that so many of us identify with when we remember our own young years. It is perhaps this bittersweet quality that, more than any other, accounts for La Bohème’s evergreen popularity.
France Bellemare as Mimi, across from Luc Robert as Rodolfo. Photo by Yves Renaud/Opéra de Montréal.
From the very first note, Bohème exudes a vitality and lyric inspiration that is almost irresistible. There is nothing in the opera that doesn’t seem organic; every note adds a bit of atmosphere, reinforces a story element, or illuminates a character. As tenor Luciano Pavarotti once said, “Bohème is like a wound-up spring: Once it starts unwinding, nothing can stop it.”
Much of Bohème’s effectiveness must be credited to the superb libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. Together with Puccini, they developed a conversational musico-dramatic language that moves fluently from “dialogue” to set pieces. It’s a style particularly suited to this group of friends, people so familiar and intimate with each other that they literally complete each other’s (musical) sentences.
France Bellemare as Mimi and Luc Robert as Rodolfo, alongside Justin Welsh (Marcello), Christopher Dunham (Schaunard), and Alexandre Sylvestre (Colline). Photo by Yves Renaud/Opéra de Montréal.
I can’t think of another opera dear to me where I’m consistently moved by, of all things, the final curtain call. Something about seeing those Bohemians, sometimes visibly affected by the tale they’ve told, gets to me. In addition to the beautiful melodies and touching love story, Bohème gives us a simple story about human beings and their relationships. Of being a friend in need—even when everyone’s in need. The love of pleasure and having a good time. Of loyalty. Of illness and the cruelty of fate. Of life’s fragility and of taking joy in little things. Of living in the moment.
Suzanne Martinucci is a New York-based writer and lecturer on opera. She is a regular panelist on the Metropolitan Opera Quiz during the Toll Brothers Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts.