[VII]
"LA BOHÈME"

The mere fact that La Bohème, Puccini's fourth work, to which he gave the plain title of opera, is his most popular composition for the stage, makes one all the more inclined to search more minutely for weaknesses. But with repeated performances (for it has passed into the regular repertory of all opera houses wherever it has been played) its unity, both as an idea and an expression, comes out more and more with remarkable distinctness.

MISS ALICE ESTY AS MIMI IN "LA BOHEME"

It captured the Italian ear and taste immediately, and babies were christened Mimi and Rodolfo just as ten years before, Santuzza and Turiddu, culled from Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, were favourite baptismal appellations. It did not take long for England—represented, in this instance, by the comparatively limited number of opera-lovers—to take it to its heart. It delighted fastidious France and even satisfied hypercritical and essentially conservative Germany. Of all Puccini's work, it exhibits perhaps the most spontaneity, and as a piece of modern music—if the melodies themselves, apart from their very definite piquancy and freshness, do not rise to any vast heights of emotional expression—its absolute continuity is certainly a very high artistic achievement and stands unquestionably as its most striking feature.

Illica and Giocosa provided the book, and their idea in providing the framework is clearly indicated by the prefatory note to the vocal score. They begin with a quotation from the preface to Murger's Vie de Bohème, of which the thoroughly impressionistic opera is a most spirited musical expression. The Bohemians, under which title the opera was first presented in England, does not express by any means the exact nature of the work. It is the spirit of Bohemianism—that curious almost undefinable quality, which in reality simply means the absolute living for, and in, the mood of the moment, and is not by any means the entire monopoly of the artistic temperament—that is portrayed by the dramatic scheme. In the matter of following Murger's story, which as a novel is the most free in the whole range of modern literature, the librettists have been careful to give the spirit rather than the letter. They even roll two characters, Francine and Mimi, into one; for they find that although in Murger's book characters of each person are clearly defined, one and the same temperament bears different names and is incarnated, so to speak, in two different persons. "Who cannot detect," they say, "in the delicate profile of one woman the personality both of Mimi and Francine? Who as he reads of Mimi's little hands, whiter than those of the Goddess of Ease, is not reminded of Francine's little muff?"

The librettists were content to string together four more or less detached scenes from the story. Save for the death of Mimi at the close, there is no real climax to any of the four acts. In the first act, the two chief characters go off and sing their final high note in the passage; in the third, where they part more in sorrow than in anger, the situation is varied between a similar device of finishing the duet "off" or by quietly sitting up at the back of the scene. These two, out of many points of subtlety, are mentioned merely as showing Puccini's mastery in catching the essential spirit of the dramatic scheme, which is atmospheric, or purely impressionistic. The supremacy of his art is shown in a very marked way by the preservation of the continuity of the idea by the musical expression. In this La Bohème stands as a very notable modern work solely because of its absolute keeping to the idea which dominates it. Leoncavallo set the same story to music, writing the book himself. As a mere adaptation of a novel for stage purposes, the dramatic portion of this opera, which keeps the stage in France and Germany, may be pointed to as offering certain points of superiority. But the music is certainly not atmospheric nor impressionistic, and the two works never really come into rivalry. Puccini's La Bohème is absolutely on its own plane, and in its own particular way supreme.

La Bohème was composed partly at Torre del Lago and partly in a villa which Puccini took for a time at Castellaccio, near Pescia. It was given for the first time at the Teatro Regio, Turin, on February 1, 1896, Toscanini being the conductor, and cast as follows:

Rodolfo Gorga.
Marcello Wilmant.
Schaunard Pini-Corsi.
Colline Mazzara.
Benoit}Polonini.
Alcindoro
Mimi Ferrani.
Musetta Pasini.