La bohème

In a freezing, darkened Paris garret, two young people grope along the floorboards for a lost key: she, to get back into her room; he, to make this chance encounter last just a moment longer. When he finds the key, he slips it into his pocket and pretends to go on searching, until their hands finally touch. From this simple gesture springs the love between Rodolfo and Mimì, and the story they will share — a story of highs and lows, of joy shadowed by sorrow. Even 130 years after their first appearance on stage, Puccini's bohemians remain among opera's best-loved characters, still a byword for youth facing up to the harshness of life. At the heart of La bohème lies no elaborate plot, only the everyday existence of four friends trying to hold on to their dreams and their love in the face of poverty and illness.

Composed by Puccini between 1893 and 1895, the opera draws on Scènes de la vie de bohème, Henri Murger's novel set in the Paris of the 1840s. The same material also inspired Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, giving rise to a real rivalry between the two composers — one that Puccini ultimately won, thanks to the clarity of his musical structure and his sheer melodic inventiveness. Puccini's legendary partnership with librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa yielded an opera of rare power, one that sets the lightness and abandon of youth against the drama of poverty and illness like nothing else in the repertoire.