The first opera Puccini, Giacosa and Illica worked on together was La bohème, followed by Tosca and Madama Butterfly.

Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte, or Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Giacomo Puccini entrusted the text to the librettists and playwrights Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, whom he held in great esteem their collaboration ranks among the most successful in the history of opera – up there with that between W. The composer was inspired by the Paris-based painter and writer Henry Murger’s book Scènes de la vie de bohème, which since its publication in 1851 had enjoyed great popularity, and he immediately sensed the enormous dramatic potential in the work. Puccini’s La bohème is one of the most frequently staged operas worldwide. He abandons her, hiding his distress, not because he does not care for her, but because he does not have the means to help her recover from her illness.State Opera Chorus State Opera Orchestra Prague Philharmonic Children´s Choir The repeated motif of her coughing signals that most nineteenth century of ailments, consumption, which she will eventually succumb to. Mimì and Rodolfo fall in love with one another and join the festivities, but barely more than a month later, Rodolfo has given up on Mimì.

Only Rodolfo, the writer of the group, hangs back from immediately joining his friends, unknowingly setting up the circumstances in which he meets Mimì, a seamstress as beautiful as he is poor. Rodolfo, Marcello, Schaunard and Colline, four young artists with barely a penny to their names, nonetheless decide that they cannot let Christmas Eve go by without a night on the town. While the story stems from fiction, specifically Henri Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème, the colour and realism Puccini adds to the tale come very much from his own experience as a struggling music student, he eked out a hand-to-mouth existence as much as the characters do in his opera.

Giacomo Puccini drew on both life and literature for what is possibly his most touching work, La bohème.

La boheme opera duration