CHAT ON LA BOHEME

On March 19, 1893 Ruggero Leoncavallo, the composer of I Pagliacci, and Giacomo Puccini met by chance at a Milan café. Before that meeting, they thought they were friends. When they left the café, they were sworn enemies. During the course of their conversation, Puccini mentioned casually that he was working on a new opera based on the French writer, Henri Mürger’s Scènes de la vie de Bohème, a loosely linked series of autobiographical episodes nearly half a century old, and thus in the public domain. Leoncavallo was outraged. He reminded Puccini that he, Leoncavallo, was already composing a Bohème and that before beginning to work on the story he had offered it to Puccini, who had refused it!

The row between the two composers moved from the café to the newspapers, whereupon it degenerated into a typical Italian melodrama. Finally, Puccini proposed himself as a peacemaker. Let Leoncavallo write his opera, he said in effect, and I shall write mine. Then the public will decide. And decide it did. Leoncavallo’s Bohème is a charming work in many ways but pales in comparison to Puccini’s. It has never caught on; the public’s choice has been judicious and implacable.

I have heard and seen many performances of La Bohème over the past half-century, some good, some bad, and some sublime. I have striven in the past ten years or so to view this opera objectively, to resist being mesmerized by its emotional impact, but to no avail. By the end of the third act, I find myself weeping like a fountain, regardless of how good or bad the performance is. By the time the final curtain falls, I’m an emotional wreck. The question I would like to explore with you, then, is the following: What is there about this opera that has succeeded in thrilling and shaking up audiences for more than a century? What accounts for its evergreen popularity?

First of all, Puccini had a good story and a good libretto. William Ashbrook talks about the unifying idea of cold that runs through all four acts: the first two take place on Christmas Eve, in Act 3 we actually see snow falling, in the final act Mimi’s hands are cold, just as they were in act one when Rodolfo sang to her his famous aria, “che gelida manina.” Accompanying this wintry atmosphere is the unifying theme of hunger and poverty. But at the same time, in each act there is the warmth of love, of youthful exuberance, of “joie de vivre.” Puccini and his librettists fashioned a text that is marvellously subtle and balanced. The flamboyant, extrovert love of Musetta and Marcello contrasts with the more delicate and perhaps more profound love of Mimi and Rodolfo, even though theirs is equally marred by jealousy and quarrels discreetly taking place offstage. Schaunard and Colline are not just colourful extras: Schaunard’s first-act supply of provisions and his comical explanation of how he got them to balance Colline’s sacrifice of his beloved overcoat in the final act to alleviate Mimi’s suffering. The outer acts, in the same setting, both begin with Bohemian horseplay and end seriously. The middle acts are set outdoors. The second act with its Latin Quarter ambiance has a festive boisterousness about it whereas the third, unfolding on the outskirts of Paris, reveals a tenderness and wistfulness that contrasts with the Musetta-Marcello spat taking place in the background.

The director and designer of this new production have conferred on Puccini’s opera an exciting new dimension by updating the action by almost fifty years to “La Belle Époque,” a period of intense artistic creativity in France towards the end of the 19th century. Marcello, the painter, could easily be the famous artist Toulouse-Lautrec who depicted in his works one of the most vibrant, vivid, and dynamic moments in the life of the City of Light. This update with its explosion of colours and impressions will certainly enhance your enjoyment of La Bohème.

But there is another reason that explains the opera’s perennial popularity: the warm-heartedness and winsome humanity of its principal characters. At first glance, Rodolfo and Mimi would appear to be an ill-assorted pair of lovers. He is a dreamer whose flights of imagination materialize in works of poetry. His temperament has an impetuousness and romantic irrationality that Puccini captures superbly by having him sing much of the time in triplets. She, on the other hand, is much more down to earth: a demure seamstress who earns her living by embroidering artificial flowers. She is also afflicted with one of the most dreaded diseases in the nineteenth century, tuberculosis. Thus Mimi corresponds to the image of the femme fragile. She is as beautiful and delicate as some exotic flower, but like the flower, needs the appropriate atmosphere in which to survive. The chronically impecunious Rodolfo can hardly create for her the ambiance necessary for her survival. Yet the two fall in love because of a profound spiritual affinity they discover in one another during the course of the first act. They both yearn for beauty and fulfillment through love.

An analysis of their autobiographical arias will bear this out. Both “Che gelida manina” (Your tiny hand is frozen) and “Michiamano Mimi” (They call me Mimi) unfold according to a circular movement. They begin rooted in reality, then soar into the realm of the ideal, and finally return to the humble circumstances from which they took flight. Being a verbal craftsman, Rodolfo is far more concise, articulate, and self-assured than Mimi. After expressing gentle solicitousness towards the sickly young woman in one of the most fragrant melodies Puccini ever penned, he portrays himself by using intransitive verbs to answer his own rhetorical questions:

Who am I? I’m a poet.

What do I do? I write.

How do I live? I live.

Although Rodolfo is impoverished, his imagination, he assures Mimi, creates the dreams of a “millionaire’s soul.” The lovely Mimi, he insists, has just robbed him of all his spiritual treasures. He doesn’t mind in the least, however, because her presence has filled him with sweet hope for the future. After rising on an inspired melodic outburst up to a high C, the poet’s voice tapers down to a gently cajoling phrase as he requests that the young lady now tell him something about herself.

The autobiographical portrait Mimi draws of herself is rather prosaic at first:

Yes. They call me Mimi, but my name is Lucia.

My story is brief. 

I embroider on linen or silk, at home or outside.

Insecure and lacking in verbal smoothness, she offers Rodolfo a rather humdrum description of her work and private life. But all is not prosaic in her aria. The seamstress can dream, too. She yearns to escape from her isolated existence as an embroiderer of artificial flowers. After a tentative start, the first half of Mimi’s aria takes flight poetically as she tells Rodolfo that she has a predilection for things whose “sweet magic” speaks of love, springtime, dreams, and chimeras. The second half of her autobiographical statement positively soars as she sings of the first “kiss” of April that belongs to her when she gazes up into the heavens from her attic window after the first thaw. Thus she echoes in her own way the vague yearnings Rodolfo expressed at the beginning of the opera as he, too, looked out the window at the grey skies.

During the course of the love duet that follows their autobiographical arias, it dawns on them progressively that they are meant for one another. Their encounter began innocently enough when Mimi knocked on Rodolfo’s door, requesting he relight her candle that had blown out in the draught on the staircase. Or did it really? There is doubt in some commentators’ minds, including mine, as to whether Mimi is really the wide-eyed, chaste, and innocent creature she is often made out to be. It seems perfectly plausible that Puccini’s heroine could have invented the bit about the candle blowing out in order to have a legitimate excuse to knock on Rodolfo’s door, and this despite her natural shyness. After all, when he asks Mimi what they might do in his room once the Christmas Eve festivities are over, she does not consider him uncouth in the least and replies tantalizingly: “Wait and see.” Now I am not questioning the authenticity of Mimi’s fainting spell, even though it arouses in Rodolfo the first stirrings of protective tenderness towards her. Nor am I casting doubts on the genuineness of her agitation when she discovers that she has lost her key. I am simply suggesting that it is legitimate to see a certain ambivalence within Mimi which, far from detracting from her sweetness of temperament, makes her a much more interesting protagonist.

Whatever motives may have impelled Mimi to knock on Rodolfo’s door, it is apparent from their autobiographical statements that each one can provide for the other the kind of emotional and spiritual sustenance they both crave. As a poet, Rodolfo fascinates Mimi because he has the seemingly inexhaustible power to conjure up fabulous vistas towards which her imagination can take flight. She, in turn, arouses his ardour with the image of vulnerability and other-worldly beauty she projects. He sees her wreathed in moonlight within the window frame like some pre-Raphaelite Madonna. The aesthetic ecstasy he experiences as he contemplates this sublime vision quickly transforms itself into the heightened emotional awareness that in Mimi he has found his soul mate. It is inevitable, then, that they should fall in love with one another. And it is absolutely appropriate that Puccini should have the two lovers voice their mutual tenderness to the two main themes of Rodolfo’s aria expressing the inspiration he finds in feminine beauty and his gentle solicitude for her physical frailty.

Romantic idealism in itself is not enough, however, to preserve their harmony. Differences in temperament, aided and abetted by poverty, doom their relationship. Signs of future conflicts appear as early as the joyous Christmas Eve scene of the second act. Rodolfo does not at all appreciate Mimi’s roving eye (she looks over a group of male students). His idealistic conception of love makes him jealous and possessive. Indeed, it seems to legitimize his jealousy and possessiveness. Mimi also seems to secretly crave luxury. She casts a longing glance at some coral jewelry in a store window that Rodolfo is obviously too poor to purchase for her. She even sympathizes with the brazen flirt Musetta despite the fact that the latter had abandoned Marcello in favour of greener pastures. By the third act, poverty has eaten away the capital of confidence and illusions without which young love cannot survive. Although Rodolfo is insanely jealous, his secret motive for wanting to break off his relationship with Mimi is his realization that the squalid conditions in which they are living are literally bringing her closer and closer to death. For her part, Mimi can no longer endure constantly being the victim of paranoid suspicions even if they are not entirely groundless (in the fourth act, we learn that she has gone off with Avis count). Surprisingly enough, although Mimi is frail physically, it is she who has the strength of character to formally terminate their relationship. Rodolfo is too impetuous and irrational to make a firm decision.

The tragedy of these two young people is that, despite their bitter recriminations and antagonisms, they are still very much in love. Mimi reveals all of the tenderness she still feels for Rodolfo in her third act aria, “Addio, senza rancor” (“Goodby, no bitterness”;). The words she utters are rather banal. But through his music, Puccini evokes the heartbreak of separation. He suffuses Mimi’s words with an affecting sweetness and resignation, having the flutes of his orchestra wreathe her vocal line in places with strands of her first-act aria. Then Rodolfo joins her in a very moving duet sung against the obligato of Marcello’s and Musetta’s virulent bickering. It reflects their acute awareness of the dead end their relationship has reached despite their need for one another. They realize that, unlike the recurring spring, their love cannot renew itself indefinitely. To stave off the loneliness they dread during the winter season, all they can do is place their relationship temporarily within parentheses and pretend that time has suspended its inexorable onslaught. But the brutal chord with which Act 3 ends is a sobering reminder that time will stop for nothing and no one. And yet, when time manifests its cruel presence in the fourth act through the imminence of death, the lovers manage to transcend strife by withdrawing into the most tender of reminiscences. And just as the sun descends progressively below the horizon and disappears, Mimi lapses into semi-consciousness before expiring.

Although the relationship between Marcello and Musetta does not have this emotional depth and fervour, it has a much better chance of survival (at least in the opera) because, unlike Mimi and Rodolfo, the flamboyant pair actually thrives on its bitching and bickering. Fighting with one another is like an electric charge that keeps their love vitally alive. On the surface, their temperaments would appear incompatible. Even though he is very soft-hearted, Marcello is trapped in a macho image of himself and likes to imagine he is always in control. Musetta, a typical Lorette, views the pursuit of material well-being and pleasure as her inalienable right, even if it means committing infidelities repeatedly against the man she claims to love. The famous “waltz song” she performs at the Café Momusin in the second act illustrates her philosophy of life. But it is precisely this apparent incompatibility of character and outlook on life that enables their variable-geometry relationship to continue indefinitely. When they get fed up with one another, they erupt and go their separate ways. Nevertheless, all the time they are estranged, they become each other’s idée fixe.

Yet even a character as juvenilely egocentric as Musetta’s is, just like the other Bohemians, profoundly shaken by Mimi’s death. Musetta was wont to assert her freedom in a most trenchant manner in the second and third acts. She would yell at Alcindoro and Marcello's statements such as: “I want to do what I please,” I want to do what I like,” I’ll make love with whomever I please,” and “I want complete freedom.” In the final act, however, we find her praying to the Madonna, imploring the Mother of God to save the life of the frail Mimi who, she is convinced, is worth far more than her. It seems, then, that for Musetta, too, the time has finally come to grow up, to break out of the bohemian model that had shaped her youth as well as that of her friends.

Thus Mimi’s death is not just simply pathetic. It has larger implications too. If one may be allowed to imagine what happens to the characters of an opera once the curtain falls for the last time, one can surmise that all of the remaining Bohemians will come out of this shattering experience sadder and wiser. It is significant that the orchestra repeats the very last measures of Colline’s sad little aria as the curtain falls. As I mentioned earlier, this is where he bids farewell to his beloved old overcoat. In the name of all of his bohemian friends, Colline has pronounced on a lovely but sorrowful spring day the valedictory of their youth. And by ending the opera with the last measures of Colline’s aria, Puccini seems to be telling us that the party is really over for the Bohemians. They will now have to grow up.