La bohème
Astonishing as it may seem today, La bohème’s fortunes were poor at the beginning. First performed in February 1896, Puccini’s romantic opera is now one of the best known operas in the world.
The story follows Bohemian writer Rodolfo and seamstress Mimì’s whirlwind romance, as both struggle with life as impoverished Parisians.
However, after a less-than-impressive first performance, with a sub-par tenor, Puccini himself despondently wandered the corridors of the Teatro Regio in Turin, Italy overhearing hushed conversations about how the opera could not possibly last.
However, La bohème soon successfully made its way around an extensive network of international theatres, and audiences lapped it up everywhere.
The first performance outside Italy was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1896. The UK premiere took place at the Theatre Royal in Manchester, in 1897, by the Carl Rosa Opera Company supervised by Puccini himself.
It is hard to hear such a familiar opera with the ears of someone listening at the end of the nineteenth century, but at that time there was definitely something of ‘the shock of the new’ about La bohème.
The New York Times condemned the opera for low morals, reporting that ‘the celebration of the scarlet woman seems to be almost unavoidable … today’.
As the years went by La bohème would establish an unshakeable place at the heart of the global operatic canon.
Star singers wanted to perform in it and to record it. Its stand-alone arias took on a life of their own through being reused in film soundtracks (most prominently in Moonstruck) and adverts, even occasionally being reworked as pop songs.
A century on from Puccini’s death, we modern audiences find it easier to appreciate that La bohème was in many respects a work ahead of its time.
The opera evokes what it feels like to fall in love and its chattering musical language makes the Bohemians very human.
Puccini didn’t write operas about epic quests and mythological beasts, he wrote about human drama – illness, lost loves and marital problems.
Suor Angelica
Sentimentality was also a charge that was laid at the door of Suor Angelica, a much later Puccini opera. Suor Angelica is part of a trio of three short operas, Il trittico (The Triptych) – Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi which was first performed in 1918.
The story of Suor Angelica is one of a young, unmarried mother separated from her child by her aristocratic family and confined to a convent.
Some early critics were puzzled by the stillness of the music used to evoke its claustral atmosphere, and the Roman-Catholic subject-matter proved a
stumbling block in the English-speaking world.
Suor Angelica, we understand with the benefit of hindsight, is an incisively gripping psycho-drama, which really gets inside its unfortunate protagonist’s state of mind.
The more modern Suor Angelica is used rather less in pop culture, though the aria ‘Senza Mamma’ made a memorable appearance in the British crime drama series Inspector Morse (Season 5 episode 1: Second Time Around) sung by Janis Kelly.
The opera has occupied a rather fringe position in Puccini’s canon, performed only sporadically throughout the twentieth century, partly because of its unusual use of exclusively female voices.
However, the twenty-first century has seen a revival of interest as theatres have started to look for alternatives to the usual Puccini favourites of Madam Butterfly, Tosca, and Turandot.
Puccini’s operas show us the sorrow to be found in situations that are fundamentally unfair.
Mimì’s state of poverty is unfair, as is her illness. Angelica’s incarceration is unfair; so too is her ill-treatment by an unforgiving society and even her own family.
Puccini’s objective was to move us and to elicit empathy and compassion for his characters. And he did so brilliantly.
More on Puccini operas
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The Beginner’s Guide to Puccini
La bohème in pop culture
