Characters
Students, work girls, citizens, shopkeepers, street venders, soldiers, waiters, boys, girls, etc.
Time—About 1830.
Place—Latin Quarter, Paris.
"La Bohème" is considered by many Puccini's finest score. There is little to choose, however, between it, "Tosca," and "Madama Butterfly." Each deals successfully with its subject. It chances that, as "La Bohème" is laid in the Quartier Latin, the students' quarter of Paris, where gayety and pathos touch elbows, it laughs as well as weeps. Authors and composers who can tear passion to tatters are more numerous than those who have the light touch of high comedy. The latter, a distinguished gift, confers distinction upon many passages in the score of "La Bohème," which anon sparkles with merriment, anon is eloquent of love, anon is stressed by despair.
Act I. The garret in the Latin Quarter, where live the inseparable quartet—Rudolph, poet; Marcel, painter; Colline, philosopher; Schaunard, musician, who defy hunger with cheerfulness and play pranks upon the landlord of their meagre lodging, when he importunes them for his rent.
When the act opens, Rudolph is at a table writing, and Marcel is at work on a painting, "The Passage of the Red Sea." He remarks that, owing to lack of fuel for the garret stove, the Red Sea is rather cold.
"Questo mar rosso" (This Red Sea), runs the duet, in the course of which Rudolph says that he will sacrifice the manuscript of his tragedy to the needs of the stove. They tear up the first act, throw it into the stove, and light it. Colline comes in with a bundle of books he has vainly been attempting to pawn. Another act of the tragedy goes into the fire, by which they warm themselves, still hungry.