La bohème

Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème ranks among the most frequently staged operas worldwide. The composer was inspired by the Paris-based painter and writer Henry Murger’s popular book Scènes de la vie de bohème, published in 1851, immediately sensing its enormous dramatic potential. He duly asked the librettists and playwrights Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, with whom he had successfully collaborated previously, to pen a text for a new opera. Their fruitful partnership is among the most cherished in the history of opera, comparable to that of W. A. Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte, or Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

La bohème premiered on 1 February in 1896 at the Teatro Regio in Turin. The seeming levity of the opera, starkly contrasting with the still prevailing Wagnerism, baffled the audience and the critics alike. The opening night met with a lukewarm response, yet two months later in Palermo La bohème was received rapturously, and ever since has enjoyed enormous popularity. As he did again later in Madama Butterfly and Turandot, Puccini manifested his mastery of musical rendition of local colour. The current State Opera production, featuring Martin Černý’s sets and Jana Zbořilová’s costumes, was created by the stage director Ondřej Havelka, who with great elegance and gentle humour, alleviating the plot’s tragic situations, suggestively evokes the milieu of late 19th-century Paris, depicting as it does the story of four young artists for whom friendship is more than a mere word.