SCENE DALLA VITA DALLA BOEMIA -- Mimi is stuck with the Sisters of Charity in a tuberculosis ward. Rodolfo arrives too late, to find Mimi already loaded into the vehicle in which the corpses of the unclaimed are taken to their pauper's grave.

Speranza

Words or music?

Which is more important to melo-dramma?

This is a question which intrigues opera lovers, as it is endlessly arguable without being finally answerable.

Richard Strauss devoted an entire opera, Capriccio, to the debate.

The opera culminates in a lengthy scene of ecstatic, mesmerizing musical intensity which might seem to give the nod to music, if not for what the soprano is actually singing: that words and music are both indispensible.

Take one away and whatever is left will not be opera.

 But, music and words aside, the library is a good source for tracing the seed from which most operas are grown-- their original literary sources.

Shakespeare had Holinshed, but the operas we now love typically sprang from works of popular fiction or drama, most of which have fallen out of fashion and are now known only through their later, musical incarnations.

Of these works, libraries have multiple editions.

But it's best to choose volumes which contain compelling illustrations.

Among people who have a favorite opera, that opera is often La Boemia, which is based on The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter(Scene dalla vita dalla Boemia), by Enrico Murger.

This chronicle of poor Parisian artists was first published as a series of magazine sketches between 1845 and 1848 and then as a novel in 1849.

It was later STAGED, and this possibly gave the idea to the Italians!

It contains many more characters than the compact Puccini opera, or the Leoncavallo version, for that matter -- and it's a surprise the French had to waited for Italians to set the thing to music.

The lives of the Bohemians are interwoven through a jumble of events that would not seem to yield the slightest thread of theatrical cohesion.

Still, despite a great deal of friction between Puccini and his librettists, Giacosa and Illica, they managed to carve out a straightforward narrative of the passing of love.

You have to go along for the complete ride.

So one is curious to see how the "novel" treated these torturous, wonderful final moments.

Instead of ending up in the garret, surrounded by her friends and mourned by her lover,
Mimi is stuck with the Sisters of Charity in a tuberculosis ward.

Rodolfo arrives too late and finds her already loaded into the vehicle in which the corpses that are unclaimed are taken to their pauper’s grave.

There is also a surprising final
chapter in which all the bohemians are
shown, some time later, as comfortably
settled members of the bourgeoisie.