An opera guide to
la bohĂˆme
Le Opere
by Giorgio De Martino
WHAT IS IT? This is an opera in four parts, referred to as “tableaux”, which was performed on stage for the first time at the Teatro Regio in Turin on 1st February 1896 (conducted by Arturo Toscanini at the age of twentyeight). It is a romantic story of overwhelming musicality and passion. A real tearjerker of an opera it also has moments when it is very amusing. Musically it is partly realist, partly impressionist and partly romantic and it takes us to Paris in the 1830s and tells the sad and sweet story of Rodolfo and Mimì, the best-loved amorous couple in the whole history of musical theatre. They are simultaneously characters from daily life and operatic heroes and through their wonderful melodies they remind us that love, by its very nature, can never be banal. La Bohème is an original opera also by virtue of its subject matter. There are none of the usual amorous intrigues here, nor do we find any “evil” characters. Destiny plays out its role in the form of an illness, tuberculosis. This is a credible tragedy which never fails to move or captivate its audience. It is a work which represents a crucial moment in the transition from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century, and the birth of contemporary opera.
WHAT DOES IT TELL US? The story is as passionate as it is linear. It is Christmas Eve. Four young artists share an attic dwelling. They are Rodolfo, the poet, Marcello, the painter, Schaunard the musician and Colline the philosopher. The main theme and leit motif of the opera is the tender love story of Rodolfo and Mimì, but there is also a precarious and litigious parallel love between Marcello and Musetta. Rodolfo introduces his new love to his friends during a lively reunion celebration at the Café Momus. However, the two are forced to part as Rodolfo cannot look after Mimi in the garret where he lives during the cold season as she has tuberculosis . In the end Mimi, feeling that she has not long to live, wants to see Rodolfo again. The heartbroken young man and his weeping friends helplessly witness his lover’s last moments.
WHO “INVENTED” LA BOHÈME In nineteenth century Paris the term bohémien was used to refer to a poor student (or one who was presumed to be so), who was fond of nocturnal pleasures, drink and new stylistic and artistic trends. Bohemians often held artistic or political views which they would never relinquish and, unlike the dandies, they gave no importance to their appearance and preferred spontaneity to self control. The French writer Henry Murger owes his fame to a single work, the serialized novel Scènes de la vie de bohème which was published in the magazine Corsaire in installments from 1844. Murger was only 22 years old at the time! In 1850 he was involved in the production of a stage version in five acts. It met with such success that the novel was published in a single volume and received an enthusiastic consensus from intellectuals and writers (as great as Victor Hugo). The entire story is autobiographical. In fact
the writer had drawn the places and the male characters from his own experience whereas the characters of Mimì and Musetta were creations of fiction. Literary critics saw the novel as one of the first examples of that narrative naturalism that had launched the golden age of the French novel in the mid nineteenth century. There were even some who spoke of the “triumph of socialism” in reference to the work’s setting and characters. This was not strictly the case: one only has to remember the end of the book (which is not however included in the opera) which has reassuring descriptions of all the bohemians who have “settled down” (apart from poor Mimì, by then dead for over a year).
WHO WROTE THE MUSIC Giacomo Puccini (1858 – 1924), the heir to Verdi, is the composer who succeeded in expressing the spirit of the late romantic period of the end of the nineteenth century as well as the new stirrings of the early twentieth century. With only partial recourse to the turn of the century musical verismo, he created a truly original style of his own, enriched by his talent for writing melodies of arresting beauty. Always carefully tuned to the changing tastes of the audiences and even to new fashions, Puccini constantly strove to keep renewing his personal style. Curious, practical and ingenious, he would carry out research into the musical culture of the countries (or periods) where he set his operas. For example he explored Gregorian chants (while composing Tosca), oriental themes (to give local colour to his Madame Butterfly and to Turandot), and motifs derived from American folk traditions and native American Indian rhythms for La Fanciulla del West. La Bohème, was Puccini’s fourth opera. Writing it at the age of thirty-eight (with Manon Lescaut as his only previous major work at the time) he finally won that international favour that remains unaltered today a full hundred years later. La Bohème is one of the three or four most frequently performed operas in Italian opera houses and is also hugely popular all over the world.
AN “INSTRUCTION BOOK” IN THE LIBRETTO Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa who had already worked with Puccini on the libretto for Manon Lescaut, also produced the libretto for La Bohème. These two literary figures and the composer formed a trio of friends and, to a certain degree, of bohemians. Puccini set up a club of “good-timers” called precisely La Bohème which had its headquarters in a wooden hut just a few metres from his house in Torre del Lago. Each member had a nickname and the one assigned to the composer was “Omo palla”! The two librettists, who would eventually also write Tosca and Madame Butterfly for Puccini, had to put up with the composer’s interminable complaints and requests for revisions as he was never satisfied with the quality of the text. However the end result was a work of astonishing beauty and modernity. In the preface to the libretto, Illica and Giacosa set out the principles that guided them in their undertaking:
“to render the essential spirit of Murger’s novel; to ensure that none of the characters should lose their own psychological identity; to reproduce with precision, but without affectation, the colours and atmospheres of the bohemian environment; not altering the novel’s general design; combining comedy and drama, lightheartedness and melancholy, joie de vivre and at the same time awareness of the transience of youth”. Following these intentions, the libretto is already a masterpiece on its own merit. Its structure (as well as Puccini’s subsequent musical treatment) is created by means of a rapid and efficient sequence of scenes which differ according to the episodes they represent but which are all connected by a thread. It is no coincidence that reference is not made to “acts” but rather to tableaux, sequences played out against a background of variegated tonalities but contained within a solid frame which begins and ends in the same Parisian garret. The four parts follow on from each other in a perfect equilibrium: the first two are lively and carefree, the third and fourth are sad and melancholic.
MUSIC LIKE A FILM CAMERA Nobody has described Parisian street life in such a realistic way as Puccini. The music (in the second tableau) moves around the Café Momus like a film-maker’s camera: it brings into focus faces, situations, pictures of daily life… the freshness of the language of Puccini’s composition, the spontaneity of the action, the fascination of the instrumental description which depicts each dramatic detail, every atmosphere, every character so precisely never ceases to amaze. The opera’s originality is already evident in the choice of subject matter. It was a brave and modern choice because no attempt had ever been made to present such stories of daily life on the operatic stage. This was a “daily life” described in music with an extraordinary sense of theatre and also with a sophisticated highlighting of this or that character by means of their musical “framing” which, in retrospect, seems to herald the new art form of the twentieth century, the cinema. And speaking of which, abundant use of the story was made later in films: already in 1916 (during the silent movie era) a French director made a film adaptation of La Bohème for the cinema and in 1926 there was King Vidor’s film with Mimì’s face represented by the pale silent film diva, Lilian Gish. And then there were others: Carmine Gallone’s film “Addio Mimì” in 1942, Marcel L’Herbier’s La Bohème in 1943 and the film-opera by Luigi Comencini in 1987/88. It is easy to see how such a modern, such a “cinematographic”, work should have made it big in the movies.
THE PLOT First tableau – In the freezing garret where he lives with Marcello (baritone), Colline (bass) and Schaunard (baritone), Rodolfo the poet (tenor) contemplates the Parisian landscape. After joking with his friends – and collectively hoodwinking their old landlord Benoît (bass) who was demanding payment
for their rent – he lets them leave promising to join them as soon as he finished writing his article but he is interrupted by the arrival of Mimì (soprano), who lives opposite... It is love at first sight. Second tableau – We are in the jolly Christmas throng in Paris’s Latin Quarter. Rodolfo introduces Mimì to his friends at the Café Momus and he makes her a gift of a pink bonnet. Meanwhile Marcello wins back the love of Musetta (soprano), a girl of somewhat too free and easy ways but – as we will soon see – with a heart of gold, who comes into the café in the company of her new but rather elderly lover, Alcindoro (bass). Third tableau – It is February. We are at the Barrière d’Enfer, in the suburbs of the French capital: Mimì, who has been left by Rodolfo, apparently as a result of his jealousy, asks Marcello for help. Marcello learns from Rodolfo that Mimì is extremely ill and that she is too fragile to share the hardships of their artists’ lifestyle. It was for this reason, in order to offer her the chance of a better life, that Rodolfo had left her. Mimì however secretly listens to the conversation between the two friends until a fit of coughing betrays her presence. The two lovers embrace once more but their separation is merely postponed. Fourth tableau – We are back in the Parisian garret again where Rodolfo and Marcello tell each other how much they miss their lovers. Reunited once more, the four young people try to forget their sad circumstances by larking about and even performing dances and duels. Suddenly Musetta and Mimì come in, the latter in great pain. She is made to lie on the bed. Musetta leaves to buy her a muff. Colline goes off to pawn his coat and Marcello goes to call a doctor. Mimì, left alone with Rodolfo, thinks back once more to the love they enjoyed only to die a few moments later.
MIMÌ THE HEROINE NEXT DOOR The whole of the first tableau presents us with the warm, friendly atmosphere that prevails among the four friends: a gallery of characters depicted in their moment of youthful exuberance and caught between their artistic life and the difficulty of their daily survival. Everything is fast, everything is extremely expressive, from the tight dialogues and goliardery to the changes in situation, the teasing characterization of Mr Benoît, the landlord, demanding the rent. When Mimi comes in the atmosphere of the garret suddenly seems to vanish leaving room to the protagonists alone (with a brilliant change of register involving the type of instruments used in the orchestra). Mimi is a luminous figure. It is impossible not to be moved by her fate which takes her from joy to sorrow, by her dream which she barely glimpses before it escapes her for ever. She is a new kind of heroine and this bears witness to the fact that opera has turned a new leaf. At the end of the nineteenth century the Wagnerian giants and the heroes of Verdi gave way to the emotional stirrings of normal folk, the sort of people you encounter every day. In the famous aria “Mi chiamano Mimì” Puccini highlights the different aspects of the young woman’s character: her childish simplicity is immediately conveyed in the leit motif (“Mi chiamano Mimì, ma il
mio nome è Lucia”). A little later we understand the difference between the young seamstress’s real life in which she sews flowers for a living, and the romantic spirit of the girl who dreams of her own personal springtime of love. Mimì is the most tender of all Puccini’s female protagonists. She has none of the tragic, heroic aura of “Cio Cio San” (Madame Butterfly) or of “Liu” (Turandot). Mimì does not do anything in particular. Her destiny is played out before our eyes and is contained in just a few essential moments: Mimì loves, suffers and dies.
THE “WOLF”THAT THREATENED TO DEVOUR MIMÌ Luigi Illica said that those “Grey skies” referred to by Rodolfo at the beginning of the opera (while he looks out over the rooves of Paris from his garret) were borrowed from a melody composed by Puccini earlier for a different opera La lupa, which was adapted from a short story by Giovanni Verga. In fact, in the spring of 1894 Puccini had gone to Catania to meet the famous writer. The trip had come about as a result of pressure from Ricordi, the publisher, who was attracted by the triumphant success of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana which was based on a Verga short story. On his return journey, Puccini, who was already uncertain of the project’s merits, had a chance encounter with the daughter of Cosima Wagner (the German composer’s second wife). She was the one who caused Puccini to reject the idea, describing the Verga story as a “savage drama of blood and lust, and blasphemous too.” So finally Puccini focused totally on La Bohème which he had already started to work on since January 1893. Puccini also had another very famous part of the score, Musetta’s (slow and suggestive) waltz, already tucked away in a drawer. In fact this was a piece which the composer had written for the piano which he had offered and published in the September 1894 issue of the Genoese magazine “Arms and Art” in memory of the commissioning of the battleship “Re Umberto”.
TUBERCULOSE TWINS: THE TWO BOHÈMES Once Murger’s popular novel was free from royalty constraints, two composers planned an opera based on it: Ruggero Leoncavallo had the idea first, but the first version to reach the stage was the one by Puccini who soon cast the efforts of the composer of Pagliacci into oblivion. This led to a dispute, not only between the two musicians but also between their respective publishing houses, Sonzogno and Ricordi, and between the two newspapers, “Il Secolo” and “Corriere della Sera”. The first traces of the opera date back to 1892, when Ruggero Leoncavallo thought of the subject and, it appears, proposed an adaptation for a libretto to Puccini himself (we must remember that Leoncavallo was a librettist as well as a composer and used to write the librettos for his own operas). At the time Puccini was busy working on Manon Lescaut and was not interested in his colleague’s offer so Leoncavallo decided to compose an opera based on the French novel himself. However in March 1893 rumours began to circulate suggest-
ing that Puccini was also working on the same subject and from this originated the bitter controversy in the press and the rivalry that chilled the old friendship between the two artists.
CONVERSATIONAL SINGING La Bohème reached the stage three years after Manon Lescaut and, compared to this previous work, the new opera met with less success on the first night. The audience applauded the opera but the critics were not impressed and some of the professionals involved did not understand its power. A telegram sent by a noted theatre impresario upon leaving the first performance has gone down in history : “Bohème an opera manqué, it won’t take off!” However, already in its first month of life the opera was performed a full twenty-four times. Even abroad La Bohème was appreciated more by the audiences than by the critics. The renowned critic Eduard Hanslick wrote: “these characters seem as though they are talking rather than singing”. This without doubt originated as a negative observation, but it nevertheless picked up on a great talent of Puccini’s, the very unique type of composition which was later referred to as “canto in conversazione” (conversational singing) and which was used later by composers such as Richard Strauss.
THE STORY OF PUCCINI’S LIFE A true Tuscan, born and bred, Giacomo Puccini was born in Lucca on 22nd December 1858, into a family which had a professional involvement in music going back many generations. The excitement caused by a performance of Aida which he attended in Pisa made him decide to dedicate his efforts to the musical theatre. He moved to Milan in order to attend courses in composition at the conservatory there and lived through difficult times owing to the financial straits his family suffered on his account. Having obtained his diploma he then took part in a competition announced by the “Sonzogno” presenting Le Villi, a one-act opera which the panel of judges did not however consider worthy of merit. It was nonetheless performed in 1884 and was well received by the public thereby enabling Puccini to secure a contract with the publishing house Ricordi. His second opera, Edgar, did not prove a particularly happy venture but the publisher, convinced of his young composer’s potential, encouraged him not to give up. Ricordi’s foresight is borne out by Puccini’s third opera, Manon Lescaut, which was received triumphantly at the Teatro Regio in Turin in 1893. When first performed in 1896, La Bohème was met with some consternation as a result of musical choices which were deemed too innovative, however very soon the real merits of this opera were also understood. At this point in his career, Puccini was already being recognised as Verdi’s most worthy heir, and, with Tosca (1900), his fame began to spill over national frontiers. With Madama Butturfly (1904) he succeeded in writing an opera set in the contemporary period but in a country as distant as Japan. Greatly
impressed by the dramatic potential of the Far West, Puccini decided to use this as the setting for his next opera, La Fanciulla del West, in which it is already possible to detect the musician’s interest in the expressive innovations of the post-Debussian musical language. The Trittico, in 1918, represents a curious attempt to present the audience with a number of different emotions within one single production. The three short acts are in fact all extremely different to each other both in terms of plot as well as in their style: Il tabarro tells an intensely dramatic story in a style of raw realism; Suor Angelica develops a story based on themes of tender lyricism while Gianni Schicchi is a light-hearted excursion into the comic genre. The composition of the next opera turned out to be particularly arduous as Puccini could not find a libretto which corresponded to his way of seeing the development of the drama. And yet the tale of the cruel Turandot and the exotic Chinese setting had immediately fascinated him. Perhaps Puccini was beginning to feel the effects of the incurable disease which was implacably consuming him. He moved to Brussels to undergo new medical treatment which turned out to be ineffective and painful. Puccini died (on 29th November 1924) without managing to finish the last pages of Turandot. The opera was completed by Franco Alfano. In 2001 Luciano Berio also turned his hand to a new finale for Puccini’s masterpiece.
WHO WAS GIUSEPPE GIACOSA? He was born in the province of Turin on 21st October 1847, and was the most important Italian playwright and librettist during the reign of King Umberto. His was a name which had achieved international popularity thanks to his collaboration with Giacomo Puccini and his librettist colleague Luigi Illica, in drawing up the libretti for La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1899) and Madama Butterfly (1904). But his name was also to be found among those who had contributed to the libretto of Manon Lescaut in 1893. Giacosa had originally graduated in law in 1868 and had begun to practice in his father’s law firm in Turin. He mixed with literary circles and made friends mainly with those writers who frequented the “Dante Alighieri” society, which included Boito and Camerana. Following a successful theatrical debut with the romantic piece set in medieval times Una partita a scacchi (1873), he went on to historical dramas with Il Conte Rosso (1880). In 1888 he moved to Milan and became director of the Amateur Acting School and professor of dramatic literature and acting at the conservatory. The success of the Signora di Challant (1891), performed by Eleonora Duse in Italy and Sarah Bernhardt in New York, made him decide to give up his academic posts to concentrate on writing plays on contemporary themes as he had already done in Tristi amori (1888). Thus followed I diritti dell'anima (1894) and the successful Come le foglie (1894). In his house in Colleretto (where he would die in 1906) he welcomed guests like Giosuè Carducci, Benedetto Croce, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Edmondo De Amicis, Antonio Fogazzaro, Giovanni Pascoli, Luigi Pirandello, Giovanni Verga and Émile Zola. A contemporary of Ibsen and Strindberg, Giacosa brought the requirements of the bourgeois
theatre to Italy and, with the realism of his dramas, he contributed to the transformation of the tastes and interests of Italian audiences.
WHO WAS LUIGI ILLICA? He was born on 9th May 1857 in Castell'Arquato in the province of Piacenza and was among the leading librettists of the post-Verdian period. He worked for Giacomo Puccini, Alfredo Catalani, Umberto Giordano and other composers. He was a journalist, a good versemaker and a member of the Milanese “Scapigliatura” movement and already as a boy had displayed a rebellious temperament. At the age of twenty he went to sea and spent the next four years in the navy. During this period he took part in the battle of Plevna against the Turks. In 1879 he settled in Milan where he became a reporter for the “Corriere della Sera”. He later transferred to Bologna where he cofounded the radical publication “Il Don Chisciotte” inspired by Carducci. He returned to Milan in 1882 and began to publish his own writings and plays. From 1889 Illica added the writing of opera libretti to his activity as a playwright. This new occupation led to a very intense period of work and his growing success was crowned in 1891 when he joined the Casa Ricordi publishing house. Over the next two decades Illica wrote for the finest composers of the age producing some thirty libretti, amongst which Germania (1902) and Siberia (1903) for Giordano, Iris (1898) and Isabeau (1911) for Mascagni, Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904) in collaboration with Giacosa and Manon Lescaut (1891-1892) for Giacomo Puccini. In 1915, at the age of 58, he enrolled in the army as a volunteer and left for the front. The following year a bad fall from a horse forced him to retire to his house in the countryside near Castell'Arquato where he died on 16th December 1919.
“SCÈNES DE LA VIE DE BOHÈME” : THE ENDING OF MURGER ‘S BOOK (…)One year after Mimi's death Rodolfo and Marcello, who were still living together, held a party to celebrate their entrance into the official world. Marcello, who had at last secured admission to the annual art exhibition, had had two paintings accepted, which had been bought by an Englishman who had once been Musette's lover. With the proceeds from this sale and the advance paid for a commission from the Government, Marcello had partly paid off his past debts. He had furnished decent rooms and had a real studio. Almost at the same time Schaunard and Rodolfo finally came to the attention of the public that bestows fame and fortune - one with an album of songs that were sung at all the concerts, and which established the beginnings of his reputation; the other with a book that kept the critics busy for a month. As to Barbemuche, he had long since given up Bohemianism. Gustave Colline had inherited money and made a good marriage. He held soirées with music and light refreshments. One evening Rodolfo, seated in his own armchair with his feet resting on his own rug, saw Marcello
come in quite flustered. "You do not know what has just happened to me," he said. "No," replied the poet. "I know that I have been to your place, that you were at home, and that you would not answer the door." "Yes, I heard you. But guess who was with me." "How do I know?" "Musette, who burst upon me yesterday evening like a bombshell, all dressed up in disquise." "Musette! So you have found Musette!" said Rodolfo, with a tone of regret. "Don’t be alarmed. Hostilities were not resumed. Musette came to spend her last night of Bohemianism with me." "What?" "She is going to be married." "Bah!" exclaimed Rodolfo. "Who is the victim?" "A postmaster who was her last lover's guardian; a fiendish fellow, it would seem. Musette said to him, 'My dear sir, before definitely giving you my hand and going to the registrar's I want eight days of freedom, I must tend to my affairs. I want to drink my last glass of Champagne, dance my last quadrille, and embrace for the last time my lover, Marcello, who is now a gentleman like everyone else, by all accounts.' And for a week the dear creature has been looking for me. Hence it was that she burst upon me last evening, just at the moment I was thinking of her. Ah, my friend! Altogether we had a sad night of it. It was not the same thing it used to be, not at all. We were like some wretched copy of a masterpiece? My love for Musette is well and truly dead. "Poor friend," said Rodolfo, "your wit is fighting a duel with your heart, take care it does not kill it!" "It is already lifeless," replied the painter, "we are done for, old fellow; we are dead and buried. Youth is fleeting! Where are you going to dine this evening?" "If you like," said Rodolfo, "we can go and dine for twelve sous at our old restaurant in the Rue du Four, where they serve on those rough ceramic plates and where we used to feel so hungry even once we had finished eating." "No," replied Marcello, "I am quite willing to look back at the past, but it must be through the medium of a bottle of good wine and sitting in a comfortable armchair. You see, I am somewhat corrupted. I no longer care for anything unless it is good!"
Le Opere
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