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La Boheme I love to share La Boheme with my friends because it is one of the best ways I know to revel in our friendship. Written by Giacomo Puccini and first performed in 1896, it is a microcosm of life. It looks at life as it is, but shows at the same time the possibilities for greatness and love in all of us. Boheme is more my lover than my friend. I have been in love with it since I was 13 years old, and I will think of it in my last hours. I share a hundred delicious little secrets with vignettes from this opera. It isn’t that I want them to be secrets; it’s that they are dear to me in the intricately-connected way that pet nicknames and stolen moments are to people in love. Thinking of them, I often smile and say to myself, “But who would understand?” La Boheme is much more than the sum of its parts. It is with me in my most exalted moments, and when I do the mundane tasks that make up many of my waking hours, such as taking my morning walk. At such times, my mind seeks its memories, from the pleasant to the ecstatic. For the first two laps of my walk, the houses, trees, and flowers are sufficient company. But by the third lap, I need La Boheme’s poet, Rodolfo, to help me place one foot in front of the other. Rodolfo: “Who am I? I am a poet. What do I do? I write. How do I live? I LIVE! In my happy poverty I squander, like a great lord, my poems and songs of love. I have shimmering dreams of castles in the air. In spirit, I’m a millionaire!” The words are glorious, but they only partly prepare us for the music. The honesty and grandeur of the music will change your life, if you allow it to. It is romantic, proud, and unashamed. It demands from you honesty and openness. Many run from its sunlit brilliance into the shadows of words like “sentimental” or “maudlin.” It is, of course, neither of these things. To face honest emotions takes courage. It will not let you pretend that “love” is “like” or that “pain” is “discomfort.” Rodolfo: “Sometimes, as now, these jewels from my treasure chest are stolen by a pair of beautiful eyes. But I don’t mind the theft … because … because, the void is filled with hope!” English is a remarkable language, filled with nuance and depth, but once you hear a great tenor sing “la speranza,” you know how inadequate the word “hope” would be at the crescendo of this aria. My God! Look at the time! I’ve walked farther than necessary to fulfill the covenant for healthy living I made with myself. Thanks, Rodolfo. Thank you, my great friend. You made it easy, again. La Boheme is the perfect opera. There is not an extra word or an errant note. It is unbearable in its sadness, and heart-lifting in its joy. When you read the libretto, you realize that the characters are so well drawn that they have more to say to you then just the words they sing. The characters become your friends and stand at your side, ready to whisper something funny or wise in you ear at the moments in life when you most need it. These friends are with you every time you love, every time you feel young, every time you hurt, and always with the right words of encouragement or support. For those who don’t know its story, let me give you a brief summary: Based on an 1851 novel by Henri Murger entitled Scenes de La Vie de Boheme, the opera takes place in the Latin Quarter of Paris in 1830. Four young friends laugh, love, and play together along the sharp edge of starvation in their freezing garret. It is Christmas Eve. After much playfulness, and just a little larceny to help pay the rent, Colline, the philosopher, Schaunard, the musician, and Marcello, the painter decide to go to the Café Momus to celebrate the holiday. They leave Rodolfo to finish his article for a newspaper called The Beaver, but they scold him to finish his work quickly and join them. (“Cut The Beaver’s tale short!” says Colline.) Alone, Rodolfo tries to write, but discovers that he can’t concentrate (“I’m not in the mood”). Mimi, a poor seamstress who lives in the highest garret in the building, stops at Rodolfo’s flat to get a light for her candle. They fall in love (I will leave the joy of how that occurs in Puccini’s capable hands). Later, they join Rodolfo’s friends in the café. Act Two takes place in the Café Momus. Rodolfo introduces Mimi to his friends: “I am a poet and she is poetry,” he says, proving, all in one line, that he knows poetry, love, and diplomacy. We are introduced to Marcello’s former girl friend, Musetta, who enters the cafe with a pompous old man as her escort. Marcello and Musetta fight constantly, and have recently separated. But Musetta tempts Marcello with a scandalous and enchanting song, and she falls once again into his arms. Larceny takes a second bow, as the young people sneak out during a parade, leaving the bill with the surprised old man. In Act Three, Mimi and Rodolfo are living together, but she is desperately ill with consumption. Rodolfo decides they must part, so that she can find a warmer place to live; he hopes it will improve her health. As they speak sadly, Marcello and Musetta are arguing in the background, attacking each other with every insult they can conjure up. In the fourth and final act, we are once again back with our playful friends in their garret. In the midst of their horseplay, Mimi, who has been living with a wealthy vicomte, comes back to be with her friends and to die in Rodolfo’s arms. Despite its tragic ending, La Boheme is the ultimate benevolent sense-of-life opera. La Boheme is life. It begins with a burst of energy and fades in the agony of death. La Boheme is youth. I don’t know what you did when you were young; I don’t know where you were, whom you loved, how you bonded with your friends. Perhaps you were in the army, or in college, or you took part in producing a play, or you built a company. La Boheme will remind you of those days. La Boheme is love. It is your first real love. It will remind you of intimate moments you haven’t thought of in a long time, even of moments you never thought of before. It will make you laugh and cry, as you haven’t done in years - unless you have been lucky enough to have La Boheme beside you since you were a child, as I have. There are a thousand touches in Boheme that define the word "genius.” One of my favorites is the manner in which Puccini begins and ends Act Three. Two sudden notes: DA DUN!! We find Rodolfo and Mimi freezing in the snow outside a tavern in the early morning, struggling with illness and pain. Marcello has just lectured Rodolfo on keeping love light, when he hears Musetta flirting behind them in the tavern. Marcello and Musetta then fight while Rodolfo and Mimi sing of love and spring. DA DUN! Ladies and gentlemen, life is up, and then it’s down. Life is down, and then it’s up. DA DUN! Another example of its perfect balance is the way the opera starts and ends. The first act opens with friends spiritedly playing; Rodolfo finds Mimi. The last act opens with friends spiritedly playing; Rodolfo loses Mimi. I could go on, but you will have a richer time discovering these “balances” on your own. There are dozens of them, and they all come together like the folds of cloth in a warm muff. It is the profound co-mingling of values and dreams that make you want to share your deepest essence with your lover. I share with La Boheme a reverent joy in living. But that is not all. Every year I grow closer to La Boheme, and, slowly, I have come to recognize a greater truth. *I am Rodolfo*. That is my essence, when I forget all my worries and fears … when I remember the glory of being human, the wonder of loving someone so totally that you complete each other’s thoughts and you can’t remember where your body ends and your lover’s body begins. At the core of my mind and heart, I am a poet: I am young, drunk with life and love. Thanks to La Boheme I will never forget that I have the soul of a millionaire! Allow me to share with you my deepest yet most simple secret: I am life’s lover and La Boheme is my theme song.
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