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"Bohemia is a sad country" wrote Alphonse de Calonne in Voyage au Pays de Boheme, - "It is bordered on the North by Need, on the South by Misery, on the East by Illusion and on the West by the Infirmary."

It is a certain way of life in certain quarters of Paris. It begins with the first Bohemia in 1830, the year of Political and literary revolution and one might trace it up to 1914, the year in which, perhaps, the nineteenth Century really ended. Bohemia was no longer a permanent escape from maturity.

If there was one man who can be described as the First Bohemian, it is Henri Murger. He was not the first in time, or the most distinguished but he gave the word 'Bohemia' its currency. He crystallised the impression of Bohemia which has come right down to the present day. He fixed a certain vision of the Bohemian way of life and, rightly or wrongly, he gave it its lasting glamour. Murger was born on March 27th, 1822. He was the son of a Parisian concierge and among his father's tenants at 5, Rue des Trois-Freres (now 61, Rue Tritbout), was Jean-Baptiste Isabay, who had been one of Napoleon's favourite artists; Joseph de Jouy, the Academician and playwright; and Lablache the tenor and his daughter. Murger was very young when he learned the charm of artistic life.

He began to earn his living as a solicitor's messenger; an occupation which allowed him to idle in the streets and compose his juvenile poetry. Before long he came to know a group of poverty-stricken artists and sculptors - "all they have for fire is their pipes, very often without tobacco. They spend half the day not eating and the other half dying of cold" wrote Murger in the Winter of 1841. They rented a studio in the Rue de Cherche-Midi which was heated by the fumes from the stables below, rising through a hole in the floor.

As a young man, Murger was already unhealthy. His features were clumsy, like those of a mask and he was prematurely bald. He had weak eyes for which he wore green spectacles, and later a monocle. Murger and the artists Tabart and Chintreuil, joined up with the sculptor Joseph Debrosses and moved to the Hotel Merciol in the rue des Canettes, where they lived in unbelievable poverty. They exchanged places in the hospital with appalling regularity. If Murger was discharged from Hospital Saint-Louis, one of the others entered it on the same day, and was soon followed by yet another. Joseph Desbrosses was exhausted by work, poverty and illness. He spent an entire year there and died of consumption in 1844. He was a promising artist and he was twenty-three. In 1843, Murger wrote, "We are aching with hunger, we are at the end of our tether. We must find ourselves a niche or blow our brains out." Yet Murger himself was probably the most prosperous of them. The solicitor for whom he had worked had understandably dismissed him but thanks to his old friend M. de Jouy, he found a post as secretary to a certain Count Tolstoy, who paid him forty francs a month. However, Murger was more than thankful to discover a cafe where the owner was sympathetic to Murger and his friends and where a cup of coffee cost five sous. It was the Cafe Momus in the rue des Pretre-Saint-Germain-L'Auxerrois, and he began to spend his evenings there. He was joined there by his friend Alexandre Schanne, who painted, gave piano lessons and played the violin. They were joined by others including his friend Champfleury, a philosopher who ended up as being director of the state porcelain factory at Sevres, and some who would become quite well known artistic and literary figures. About this time, Murger began to write his Scenes de la vie de Boheme and in February, 1845, in a letter to a friend, Murger announced his first steps to fame. "I have tossed a dozen anecdotes or so in to the letter box of LE CORSAIRE and I shall now enjoy seeing them in print." Murger was to embroider on the subject. "In those days, Gustave Colline, the great philosopher, Marcel, the great painter, Schaunard, the great musician and Rodolphe, the great poet, as they used to call each other, regularly frequented the Cafe Momus. They were always seen together, in fact they came and went together and sometimes failed to pay their bills." The names may have been ficticious but they were certainly based on quite a few of Murger's friends.

Murger's second article was printed almost a year after the first on March 6th, 1846. It described how Rodolphe, a poet, won the love of a young girl named Louise. Rodolphe was clearly Murger himself and Louise was inspired by Lucile Louvet, a factory girl he had come to know, and who was undoubtedly the model for Mimi, who first appeared in the third of his sketches on July 9th, 1846. Thereafter he gave readers a regular account of his own liaison. Murger remained desperate for money and he was obliged to supply copy twice a week. The last instalment of Scenes de la vie de Boheme appeared four years after the first: in April, 1849.

His characters certainly owed much to his friends and acquaintances. Musette was based on one of the wild queens of Bohemia, Marie-Christine Roux. "Her wit was genuine," went her obituary, "and her voice was remarkably melodious. She expressed herself with a purity which gave no hint of her lack of education."

Scenes de la vie de Boheme had begun to appear in LE CORSAIRE in 1845 for which Murger was paid 15 Francs an article. However, popular success was only to come when the work was adapted for the stage. La vie de Boheme by Murger and Theodore Barriere was first performed at the Theatre de Varietes on November, 22nd 1849 and was greeted with enthusiasm. "To be five-and-twenty, poor and in love, that is enough; and at that age and in those circumstances, you could feel that Murger has said everything."

On the evening of the premier, the publisher Michel Levy, took both its authors to supper at the Maison D'Or. He offered Murger five hundred Francs in Gold, on the spot, if he would gather his stories from LE CORSAIRE into a book and give him all the rights. Murger accepted and within days, moved into an apartment on the Right Bank. "Would you believe it," said Theodore de Banville, "Nowadays that lucky Murger peels his pippins with silver handled knives."

While many Bourgeois had secretly aspired to be Bohemian, Murger himself had longed to be bourgeois; and his change of address was symbolic. In the preface to his book the following year he wrote, "Bohemia is a stage in artistic life; it is the preface to the Academie, to the Hotel-Dieu or the Morgue." It led all too frequently to the poor-house or to death. He died on January 28th 1861. He was thirty eight. His last words were "No music, no noise, no Bohemia ... no Bohemia!"

The Birth of La BohÈme
Puccini always claimed that he had worked seriously on the projected opera since the first performances of 'Manon Lescaut.' These remarks, published in the CORRIERE DELLA SERA of 20th March 1893, were occasioned by the discovery during a casual conversation with Leoncavallo, that the composer of 'I Pagliacci' had also started writing an opera, 'La Boheme', both libretto and music. A letter from Giacosa to the librettist Illica dated 22nd March, 1893, backs up Puccini's claim. In it, he acknowledges the receipt of Illica's prose sketch for 'La Boheme.' In a note prefacing their libretto for Puccini, Giacosa and Illica declared that they had retained the right to treat the subject freely since Murger's book was 'perhaps the most free in modern literature.' The challenge was to adapt a book which caught the spirit of Bohemian life in a series of unrelated incidents and characters. The result was a verse text with an elegantly symmetrical structure of four scenes and six principal characters. The three and a half years spent adjusting and revising the libretto were exhausting for librettists, composer and publisher, with frequent threats of resignations.

For a start, Puccini was originally considering another book, 'La Lupa' (The she-wolf) from the same set of stories as 'Cavalleria Rusticana', by Giovanni Verga. He only resolved not to to pursue it after a research visit to Sicily in 1894. To Ricordi, he he explained his reasons: "[...] too many dialogues in the libretto, which are drawn out to excessive lengths, and the unattractive characters, without a single luminous and appealing figure to stand out from them [...]"

Those telling adjectives, 'excessive', unattractive', 'luminous' - hint at the qualities he found in 'La Boheme.'

Although Murger's book had been a great success as a play, the stage version is very different from Puccini's libretto. 'La Boheme' is inspired by the book whereas Leoncavallo took the play as the basis for his opera. The simultaneous public announcements of these two operas with the same title led to fierce recriminations in which Puccini reacted by saying, 'Let the public judge.' That Leoncavallo completed his opera in 1898, suggests that he was not as far advanced in 1893, as he made out. However, in defence of Leoncavallo, the fact remains that Puccini seems to have been drawn to a subject once it had been chosen by someone else. His success with 'Manon Lescaut' (1893) followed Massenet's opera (1884) and his next choice (Tosca) was only determined finally when he heard that Franchetti had decided to work on it.

Situations which move audiences, whether to tears or to laughter and without 'excessive dialogue' form the core of the Acts for Puccini's opera. Giacosa and Illica devised a balanced dramatic sequence and in the course of this construction process, as late as December, 1893, an entire Act which was to follow the 'Barriere d'Enfer', was discarded although it had already been versified. Illica was outraged.

It was not until after his fruitless visit to Sicily that Puccini really settle down to work and he began to exact detailed modifications much to the annoyance of Giacosa and Illica who had hoped that most of their problems were settled. Act 1 used to begin rather differently and in its original shorter form, contained no aria for the tenor, no 'che gelida manina'!! It was not until 1894 that Rodolfo's and Mimi's autobiographical arias took shape. For Act 2, Puccini had very different views of Musetta's character than that sketched by Illica and it was only after considerable turmoil that Puccini's conception prevailed. Act 3 once began with some comic episodes but these were later discarded. Act 4 presented the greatest difficulty. Puccini originally wanted the Act to open with Mimi already in bed, while Rodolfo would be seated at his desk but Illica on this occasion successfully argued against it becaused it produced the impression that Rodolfo and Mimi had never parted. These final issues were not resolved until late in October, 1895, barely three months before the scheduled premiere and after Puccini had completed the orchestration of the first three Acts.

The world premiere of 'La Boheme' took place at the Teatro Regio, Turin, on the 1st February, 1896, and most of the critics expressed their disappointment in the new opera, if not hostility towards it. The reasons for the generally unfavourable tone of the reviews are not too difficult to find. For one thing, only a few weeks earlier, Toscanini had opened the season at the Regio with the first Italian production of 'Gotterdammerung'. No wonder that the critics who had just braced themselves for the longeurs of Wagner were put off by the terseness of Puccini's latest score. Another things was that Puccini had not yet put the score of 'La Boheme' into the final form we know today and these differences were sufficient to dampen the effectiveness of Act 2 in particular. However, not for the first time, the public were more cordial than the critics. They applauded the first run of performances warmly if not enthusiastically and today, the success of 'La Boheme' is so incontestibly assured that it is difficult to imagine the relative coolness of its first reception.

In choosing the tenors, I have tried to pick voices that will hopefully stimulate discussion:

Singer (01) is an English tenor who sang like an Italian. Tom Burke, recorded 1920. Burke was hugely successful both in England and the U.S. He was Italian trained and made his debut in Rigoletto, also in Italy. He sang with the important singers of the day and should have had a career to rival that of tenors such as Gigli, but drink, women, the good life and scandal brought him down. While his career was in tatters in a few short years, he retained his voice, which lasted him into his seventies.

Singer (02) is another English tenor, Heddle Nash, also Italian trained but whose long career was almost totally in England. This was recorded in 1933, in English. Nash is a tenor who is not to my personal taste but what he lacked in the way of ringing tones, he made up for in other ways.

Singer (03) is another English tenor, not usually associated with Opera, Webster Booth. The recording dates from about 1938.
Booth tended to sing in light musicals and operetta and like so many others, the war years drastically affected his career although with his wife Anne Ziegler, he was a great favourite on radio. In spite of his light tenor voice, his high C is a revelation.

Singer (04) is Italian tenor Gianni Raimondi, recording taken from a 'live' performance in 1963, from La Scala, Milan. The recording quality is poor, but Raimondi is in excellent voice. There are only a few studio recordings available of Raimondi, in which he sounds uncomfortable. He was very much a 'stage singer' so this recording is welcome.

Singer (05) is Italian tenor Giuseppe Sabbatini (recorded 1988) in a beautiful performance which has the added attraction of allegedly being accompanied by the Autographed version of Puccini's score which has quite noticeable differences to the orchestration we are more used to and requires more careful (and very pleasing) listening.

Singer (06), the last of the group is Fritz Wunderlich, recorded live in 1963 at a Munich Sunday concert. It is sung in German which for me, in this case, matters not. Wunderlich is simply Wunderlich. He is incomparable and irreplaceable. In my view this is a performance to be set aside on its own.

· Audio ·
Puccini: La Bohème: Che gelida manina:

(01) Tom Burke (1920) » listen to audio | 0.99 mb
(02) Heddle Nash (1933) » listen to audio | 1.10 mb
(03) Webster Booth (c1938) » listen to audio | 1.03 mb
(04) Gianni Raimondi (1963) » listen to audio | 1.06 mb
(05) Giuseppe Sabbatini (1988) » listen to audio | 1.16 mb
(06) Fritz Wünderlich (1963) » listen to audio | 1.26 mb

NB: All audio removed in accordance with GT.com's policy on audio files.

Che gelida manina, What a frozen little hand,
se la lasci riscaldar. let me warm it for you.
Cercar che giova? What's the use of looking?
Al buio non si trova. We shan't find it in the dark.
Ma per fortuna But luckily
e una notte di luna, it's a moonlight night,
e qui la luna and the moon
l'abbiamo vicina. is near us here.
(mentre Mimi cerca di ritirare la mano). (as Mimi tries to withdraw her hand).

Aspetti, signorina, Wait, mademoiselle,
le diro con due parole I will tell you in two words
chi son, e che faccio, what I am, what I do,
come vivo. Vuole? and how I live. May I?
Chi son? Sono un poeta. Who am I? I am a poet.
Che cosa faccio? Scrivo. What do I do? I write.
E come vivo? Vivo. And how do I live? I live.
In poverta mia lieta In my carefree poverty
scialo da gran signore I squander rhymes
rime ed inni d'amore, and love songs like a Lord.
Per sogni e per chimere When it comes to dreams and visions
e per castelli in aria, and castles in the air
l'anima ho milionaria. I've the soul of a millionaire.
Talor dal mio forziere From time to time two thieves
ruban tutti i gioelli steal all my jewels
due ladri: gli ochi belli. out of my safe-two pretty eyes.
V'entrar con voi pur ora, They came in with you just now
ed i miei sogni usati and my customary dreams,
e i bei sogni miei my lovely dreams,
tosto si dileguar! melted at once into thin air.
Ma il furto non m'accora, But the theft doesn't upset me.
poiche, poiche v'ha preso stanza For their place has been
la speranza! taken by hope.
Or che mi conoscete, Now that you know all about me,
parlate voi, deh! parlete, Chie siete? You tell me now who you are.

Vi piaccia dir! Please do!

Acknowledgements:
- Keith Shilcock (Audio restorer par excellence).
- William Ashbrook (The Operas of Puccini)
- Nicholas John (A commentary on 'La Boheme')
- Edward Greenfield (The music of 'La Boheme')
- Joanna Richardson (Henri Murger and 'La Vie de Boheme')
- The 'Plymouth Gin' company (I like the product - no other reason)**
** (also 'The Famous Grouse', 'Smirnoff', 'Ron Barcardi' , 'Mount Gay' , 'Don Carlos', 'Jim Beam', etc...)
- Joern H. Anthonisen (for his usual high standard of presentation & photographs)