Everyone knows La Boheme, even those who don’t watch opera. The season’s last performance was about to be enacted at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco and I decided to see it.
The opera’s director said it was the world’s most popular opera and was considered by many art critics to be a ‘sparkling diamond of the operatic world’. The opera was first performed in Turin, Italy in February, 1896. In the months that followed, it went global.
Puccini has been called the greater composure of Italian opera after Verdi. During his lifetime, his success outstripped that of other Italian opera composers. In theentire history of opera, he has been matched by only a handful of composers. Three of his works (La Boheme, Tosca, and Madame Butterfly) rank in the world’s top ten operas. And he ranks third (behind Verdi and Mozart) in the overall number of his performances.
La Boheme is popular with audiences throughout the globe. It does not deal with the lives of kings and queens, Gods and Goddesses, and the rich and famous, as many other operas. It deals with the lives of simple people
I had only seen two operas prior to seeing La Boheme: Verdi’s Aida at the Sydney Opera House and Walter Scot’s The Bride of Lammermoor at the New York Metropolitan Opera.Both had been outstanding. I did not know the story behind La Boheme and had made it a point to not read it in advance to preserve the suspense.
La Boheme turned out to be a stellar performance. The tragic love story takes place in the 1840s. It is set in the Latin Quarter of Paris and unfolds with searing intensity in four acts.
Puccini has set the music to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa and based the story on the novel ‘Scenes de la vie de boheme’ by Henri Murger. Murger, a working class writer, was not yet 30 when he wrote the novel.
In the first act, we see four bohemians, Rodolfo, Marcello, Colline, and Schaunard. They are hanging out in their poverty-stricken apartment in Paris and doing their best to avoid paying rent. Fearful that the landlord will harass them, one evening they head out for a night on the town.
But Rodolfo stays behind to finish up an article he has to write and is interrupted by a neighbour, Mimì, who is looking for someone to light her candle. It is a case of love at first sight. Mimì decides to go out with Rodolfo.
The romance progresses with the opera. All along, we observe that Mimi has a persistent and loud cough which seems to be getting worse. That is a hint of what lies ahead.
The three acts go quickly. Now we are in the fourth act. As the end nears, the spare dialogue takes on an almost unbearable air of poignancy.
The three Bohemian men are gathered in a room with Rodolfo, whose beloved is lying on a bed. She has gone silent after a brief conversation in which she asks him if she is still beautiful (they had broken up in a prior act and had reconnected by chance) and he says as beautiful as the dawn. She responds that the comparison is bad: “You should have compared me to the sunset.”
Then she goes silent. Rodolfo thinks she is resting. But the others know she has died, consumed by consumption. Rodolfo refuses to accept her death until one of his friends looks him in the eye and says one word, and just one word, “Courage.”
At that point Rodolfo drops the glass he is holding. It falls to the stage and shatters, just like his heart.
This moment was so authentic that I, a man in his sixties, who has seen just about all the shows that are out there, in real life, on the Big Screen and on the stage, broke down like a child. This does not happen every day.
The opera ends and I get up to leave. The lines are moving slowly. I look around and notice that just about everyone else is sniffling or wiping their eyes.
So why did I break down? Was it the acting? Was it the lighting on the stage? Or was it just the script? Regardless, the effect was amazing, awesome and mesmerizing.
The next day I shared my experience with a friend who is a music aficionado and asked him was it the script, was it the acting, or was it the staging that led to my meltdown? He said: “You left out arguably the most important cause of your emotions: Puccini himself! The dramatic, soaring, tragic, luscious melodies and tender harmonies are unbelievable in La Boheme, and indeed throughout all of Puccini.”
I pondered that comment. Indeed, it may have been the music. The story by itself was striking but not exceptional. It was the music that had put it over the top. I was seated in the very front row and the music was coming through loud and clear, along with the gesticulations of the conductor. I could see the music sheets. Had I been able to read them, the effect may have been even more profound.
My friend said that he had recently seen the opera being performed at his alma mater. As the end came, he was overcome by the same catharsis. He said he always finds it pretty amusing that nearly everyone who goes to a Puccini opera knows exactly what is going to happen (I sure didn’t) and yet no one ever leaves the show with dry eyes (mine were totally wet).
Now I understood why La Boheme is so popular with audiences throughout the globe. It does not deal with the lives of kings and queens, gods and goddesses, and the rich and famous, as many other operas. It deals with the lives of simple people.
Puccini said that his success came from putting “great sorrows in little souls.”His operas show that at some point in their lives, everyone is going to endure “love and envy, loss and heartbreak.”
One art critic says that the characters in his operas “are portrayed so deeply and so vividly that, as we look on, their emotions soon become ours…and their heartbreaks seem as wrenching as our own.”
It is that very simplicity of expression that disappoints other art critics. But Puccini was not composing for them. He was composing for the world at large. That is the reason for his continuing popularity.
The writer is developing his taste for watching operas. [email protected].
Published in Daily Times, June 26th 2018.