Straight from the Source
Excerpts from Henry Murger's novel, Scènes de la vie de bohème , upon which Puccini's opera is based
ACT ONE
An attic studio, on Christmas Eve
?Mimì was a charming girl, especially apt to appeal to Rodolphe, the poet and dreamer. Aged twenty-two, she was slight and graceful. Her face reminded one of some sketch of a highborn beauty; its features had marvelous refinement. The hot, impetuous blood of youth coursed through her veins, giving a rosy hue to her clean complexion that had the white velvety bloom of the camellia. This frail beauty allured Rodolphe. But what wholly served to enchant him were Mimì's tiny hands that, despite her household duties, she contrived to keep whiter even than those of the Goddess of Ease.?
ACT TWO
A square in Montmartre, outside the Café Momus, the same evening
?Gustave Colline the great philosopher, Marcel the great painter, Schaunard the great Musician, and Rodolphe the great poet ? as they were wont to style themselves ? regularly frequent the Café Momus where, being inseparable, they were nick-named the four musketeers?Indeed they always went about together, played together, dined together, often without paying the bill, yet always with a beautiful harmony worthy of the Conservatoire Orchestra.
? Mademoiselle Musette was an attractive twenty-year-old girl who, a short time after her arrival in Paris, had become what pretty girls do when they have a fine body, lots of coquetry, some ambition, and no spelling. After having been the joy of suppers in the Latin Quarter for a long time, where she had made a name for herself by singing with a voice continually fresh, if not always true, she suddenly left the Rue de la Harpe. She was not slow in becoming one of the queens of the aristocracy of pleasure and little by little made her way toward that goal of fame which consists in being mentioned in all the Paris newspapers.?
ACT THREE
Outside a tavern near one of the gates of Paris, late February, two months later
?Mimì voice seemed to go through Rodolphe's heart like a death-knell. His love for her was a jealous, fantastic, weird, hysterical love. Scores of times they were on the point of separation. It must be admitted that their existence was a veritable hell-on-earth.
?And yet, amid all their tempestuous strife, they mutually agreed to pause for the refreshment and solace afforded by a night of love; but the dawn merely brought with it some unlooked-for battle which served to drive love, terror-struck, away.
?Thus (if life it was) did they live; a few happy days alternating with many wretched one while perpetually awaiting a divorce.?
ACT FOUR
The attic, the next summer
?At that period, indeed for some time past, the friends had lived lonely lives. Musette had once more become a sort of semi-official personage, for three or four months Marcel had never seen her. ?And Mimì too; no word of her had Rodolphe ever heard except he talked about her to himself when he was alone. One day, as Marcel furtively kissed a bunch of ribbons that Musette had left behind, he saw Rodolphe hiding away a bonnet, that same pink bonnet which Mimì had forgotten.
?Good? muttered Marcel, ?he's as craven-hearted as I.'
?A merry life yet a terrible one!?
Anyone who wants to spend his life in the arts, with no other means of support but art alone, must pass along the paths of le bohème.
Henri Murger
Scènes de la vie de bohème
Bohemia is only a stage in a man's life, except in the case of fools and a very few others. It is not a profession. A man does not set out saying, ?I am going to be a bohemian?; he trudges along, whispering to himself, ?I an going to be a poet, or an artist, or some other kind of great man,? and finds Bohemia, like a tavern by the wayside. He may stay there for years, and then take post-horses along the road; he may stay a little time, and then go back whence he came, to start again in another direction as a Civil Servant, or a respectable man of business; only a very few settle down in the tavern, forever postponing their departure, until at last they die, old men, still laughing, talking flourishing glasses, and drinking to their future prosperity.
Arthur Ransome
Nothing stops these brave adventurers ? they live, you might say, on the fringes of society and belong to that race of obstinate dreamers for whom art remains a faith?their day-to-day existence is a work of genius, a daily problem which they have to resolve. If a fortune fell into their hands, you would see them rushing helter-skelter into the most ruinous fantasies, loving the youngest and most beautiful women, drinking the oldest and best wine, unable to find enough windows out of which to throw their money.
Henri Murger
Courtesy of Boston Lyric Opera
