Meanwhile Marcel, who has re-entered the tavern, has caught Musetta flirting with a stranger. This starts a quarrel, which brings them out into the street. Thus the music becomes a quartet: "Addio, dolce svegliare" (Farewell, sweet love), sing Rudolph and Mimi, while Marcel and Musetta upbraid each other. The temperamental difference between the two women, Mimi gentle and melancholy, Musetta aggressive and disputatious, and the difference in the effect upon the two men, are admirably brought out by the composer. "Viper!" "Toad!" Marcel and Musetta call out to each other, as they separate; while the frail Mimi sighs, "Ah! that our winter night might last forever," and she and Rudolph sing, "Our time for parting's when the roses blow."
Act IV. The scene is again the attic of the four Bohemians. Rudolph is longing for Mimi, of whom he has heard nothing, Marcel for Musetta, who, having left him, is indulging in one of her gay intermezzos with one of her wealthy patrons. "Ah, Mimi, tu più" (Ah, Mimi, fickle-hearted), sings Rudolph, as he gazes at the little pink bonnet he bought her at the milliner's shop Christmas eve. Schaunard thrusts the water bottle into Colline's hat as if the latter were a champagne cooler. The four friends seek to forget sorrow and poverty in assuming mock dignities and then indulging in a frolic about the attic. When the fun is at its height, the door opens and Musetta enters. She announces that Mimi is dying and, as a last request, has asked to be brought back to the attic, where she had been so happy with Rudolph. He rushes out to get her, and supports her feeble and faltering footsteps to the cot, on which he gently lowers her.
She coughs; her hands are very cold. Rudolph takes them in his to warm them. Musetta hands her earrings to Marcel, and bids him go out and sell them quickly, then buy a tonic for the dying girl. There is no coffee, no wine. Colline takes off his overcoat, and, having apostrophized it in the "Song of the Coat," goes out to sell it, so as to be able to replenish the larder. Musetta runs off to get her muff for Mimi, her hands are still so cold.
Rudolph and the dying girl are now alone. This tragic moment, when their love revives too late, finds expression, at once passionate and exquisite, in the music. The phrases "How cold your hand," "They call me Mimi," from the love scene in the first act, recur like mournful memories.
Mimi whispers of incidents from early in their love. "Te lo rammenti" (Ah! do you remember).
[[Listen]]
Musetta and the others return. There are tender touches in the good offices they would render the dying girl. They are aware before Rudolph that she is beyond aid. In their faces he reads what has happened. With a cry, "Mimi! Mimi!" he falls sobbing upon her lifeless form. Musetta kneels weeping at the foot of the bed. Schaunard, overcome, sinks back into a chair. Colline stands dazed at the suddenness of the catastrophe. Marcel turns away to hide his emotion.
Mi chiamano Mimi!