La bohème

Giacomo Puccini
b. Lucca, Toscana, December 22, 1858; d. Brussels, Belgium, November 29, 1924

Giacomo Puccini was born in the Tuscan town of Lucca, where his family had a long musical history. He was a fifth-generation composer. After the death of his father, Giacomo was sent, at the age of five, to study with his uncle, Fortunato Magi, an accomplished organist and teacher. It soon became clear that the young musician was talented, and equally clear that opera was his calling. In 1880, Giacomo entered the Milan Conservatory. In 1882, he produced his first opera, Le villi, for a competition sponsored by the Italian music publisher Sonzogno. Unfortunately, he did not win.

Le villi was not a complete loss for Puccini, though. Giulio Ricordi, the internationally famous head of Sonzogno’s major competitor, liked it. In 1884, Ricordi purchased the copyright to Le villi and commissioned a new work from Puccini. The new commission, Edgar, was a disaster, but with Le villi and Edgar done, Puccini had completed his apprenticeship. Of the ten remaining operas he would compose in his lifetime, four would be among the most performed operas of all time—La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot. Five would earn established places in the repertoire—Manon Lescaut, La fanciulla del West, Gianni Schicchi, Il tabarro, and Suor Angelica; while only one, La rondine, would be largely ignored.

Around 1884, Puccini began an affair with Elvira Gemignani, the wife of a Lucchese merchant. She would bear Puccini a son in 1886, but they would not be free to marry until after the death of her husband in 1904.

On a trip to attend a performances of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at Bayreuth, Puccini was inspired to write a new opera. When Manon Lescaut premiered in 1893, it was a huge success. Author, playwright, and critic George Bernard Shaw declared Puccini the heir to Giuseppe Verdi. A string of major works followed: La bohème in 1896, Tosca in 1900, and Madama Butterfly in 1904. 

A car accident in 1903 left Puccini wheelchair-bound for months, and shortly afterwards he was diagnosed with diabetes. His librettist Giacosa died in 1906 at the age of 58. In 1909, Puccini’s maid committed suicide after Elvira accused her of having an affair with the composer. Puccini’s renown made this an international news story. 

After the premiere of La fanciulla del West in 1910, it would be seven years before the composer completed another opera. The next composition was La rondine, Puccini’s only operetta. Il trittico, a triple-bill of Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi, followed in 1918, but the composer was unable to attend the New York premiere.

Shortly thereafter, Puccini began work on his final opera, Turandot. He did not live to finish his Chinese fable. Two years after his death, Turandot—completed by the composer Franco Alfano—would premiere under the baton of Puccini’s friend, the conductor Arturo Toscanini.

Giuseppe Giacosa
b. Colleretto Parella, near Turin, October 21, 1847
d. Colleretto Parella, September 1, 1906

Luigi Illica
b. Castell’Arquato, near Piacenza, May 9, 1857
d. Colombarone, an estate near Castell’Arquato, December 16, 1919

Puccini’s collaboration with librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa was one of the most successful partnerships in operatic history. Illica was the first to link up with Puccini. A young playwright, poet and sometime journalist with a number of opera books to his credit, he was brought in by Giulio Ricordi in the spring of 1891 to salvage the libretto of Manon Lescaut. The job had first been offered to the more experienced Giacosa, who had declined and recommended Illica instead.

After Puccini’s great success with Manon Lescaut, Giacosa agreed to join in the next venture, La bohème. More than a decade older than Puccini and Illica, both still in their early thirties, he was already a distinguished literary figure with plays, poetry and essays to his credit. His close friendships included those with the poet Arrigo Boito, librettist for Verdi’s last operas, and the French giant, Emile Zola.

The extraordinary chemistry of the group, which with the crucial addition of Ricordi was actually a quartet, yielded the treasures of La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. The collaboration ended in 1906 with the death of Giacosa, whose thoughtful and generous ways—Puccini dubbed him “the Buddha”—helped calm his more emotional partners.

In their division of labor Illica was assigned the task of extracting an operatic storyline from the original sources. Giacosa would then give this material literary shape and turn it into verse form. Puccini would insert himself wherever and whenever he chose, which generally meant everywhere and all the time. A diplomat par excellence, Ricordi would referee, cajole, soothe, scold, praise and not infrequently vacate his president’s chair as head of the Ricordi publishing firm to join in the fray.

The creative energies were fiery hot and the disputes frequent with one or other of the librettists despairing, offering or threatening to quit. Reams of what seemed to the literary team brilliant writing would be thrown out; whole scenes, even an act in the case of La bohème, would be discarded. Always there was Puccini, his theatrical instincts well sharpened by his previous troubles with weak librettos, ruthlessly insisting on what he felt would be most effective on the stage.

The source for La bohème was Henri Murger’s mid-nineteenth century book, Scènes de la vie de Bohème, which was subsequently turned into a play by Theodore Barriere. The play became a great hit in France and brought Murger both fame and money. In the book he depicts through a series of vignettes the difficult life in Paris in the 1840’s of artists and writers, which, as a struggling writer himself, Murger had known firsthand.

An unfortunate circumstance, at least for Ruggiero Leoncavallo, the composer of Pagliacci, found both him and Puccini working on the Murger material at the same time. Leoncavallo claimed that he had earlier proposed the idea to Puccini, who had showed no interest. Charges and counter charges were headlined in the newspapers. Whatever the truth, Puccini finally said, in effect, let us both proceed with our operas and the public will make its choice. The public indeed did. How many today even know of the existence of Leoncavallo’s version which came out 15 months after Puccini’s?

by Joanne Sheehy Hoover