100 years of crowd pleasing

The critics were lukewarm, the soprano's hand was tiny and frozen, and it was a wonder the libretto was ever finished. But after an unpromising first night in Turin, Puccini's La Boheme has become a mainstay of the popular repertoire. By Christopher Cowell

Last year it was Dido and Aeneas that led the operatic pack, a nose ahead of its rivals, thanks to the convenient timing of its composer's death 300 years before. This year, the Carthaginian queen passes her anniversary baton to Mimi, the fragile flower-girl of Puccini's La Boheme, which was premiered, under the young Arturo Toscanini, in Turin on 1 February 1896.

Unlike Purcell's opera, which languished in obscurity for 200 years, Boheme's performing history is an almost unbroken catalogue of success. Toscanini may have ignored the public's calls for encores on opening night, and its critical reception may have been far from flattering but, compared with the famous first-night fiascos of La Traviata or Carmen, Boheme was a palpable hit. With the dedicated promotion of Puccini's publisher, Giulio Ricordi, it soon followed the composer's first great success, Manon Lescaut, on to the international stage. Puccini's self-doubts were assuaged and, after some small adjustments, he followed it to Manchester in 1897, to New York and Paris in 1898, and to Covent Garden in 1899, where the Mimi was Dame Nellie Melba no less. Perhaps it was a lack of warmth in her technically controlled but apparently rather emotionless characterisation that prompted Caruso, when appearing opposite her in New York, to fill her tiny frozen hand with a hot potato just before his aria (other sources favour a more suggestive item of charcuterie).

Since the turn of the century Boheme has remained consistently in the core repertoire of every major opera house. The current Covent Garden company has notched up 510 performances since first presenting the piece in 1948, while a consultation of Opera magazine's listings for one year picked at random shows 39 different productions in 16 countries, a record to earn the respect even of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. Opera companies love to do it because it is that rare bird in their aviary, a guaranteed box- office smash. Along with Carmen and Tosca, Le nozze di Figaro and Madama Butterfly, it always sells.

A cynic might attribute its appeal to a plot absolutely devoid of complication - boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, girl dies - and to a running time which, at comfortably under two hours, would fit snugly inside a single act of Wagner's Meistersinger. The worthy and too often unsung semi-professional companies rely on it as an opera at once lushly romantic and suitable for young (ie inexpensive) voices. Coming early in the careers of its soloists, it frequently offers a first taste of stardom to the divas of the future: Renata Tebaldi (La Scala 1946), De Los Angeles (Covent Garden 1953), Katia Ricciarelli (Mantua 1969), Ileana Cotrubas (replacing an indisposed Mirella Freni, La Scala 1975) and, most recently, Angela Gheorghiu in London - all have benefited from Boheme's magic touch.

But if its history in front of the public is one of effortless success, the opera's gestation and birth were rather otherwise. Giulio Ricordi took something of a gamble in promoting the project, which first emerged in 1892, before Puccini had established himself with Manon Lescaut as an international star and the long-awaited inheritor of Verdi's mantle (a heavy garment that caused the younger composer some discomfort).

Trouble began almost immediately. The source of the original idea to adapt Henry Murger's Scenes de la Vie de Boheme for the lyric stage was a matter of some dispute. Although Ricordi induced Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, contributors to the libretto of Manon Lescaut, to continue their collaboration, a prior claim to the subject (moral if not legal) lay with Ruggero Leoncavallo, composer of I Pagliacci and one of the original writers on the much-revised Manon Lescaut text. Saintliness was not one of Puccini's qualities, and it is a charitable biographer who would believe he had no knowledge of Leoncavallo's intention of composing a Boheme to his own text. Indeed, it is likely that, just as Massenet's Manon was the inspiration and the spur for Puccini's version of the same story, so the prospect of Leoncavallo's possible success with a La Boheme goaded his more talented rival into the ring.

At all events, the competition becomes a matter of record in 1893 when, returning from the triumphant Turin premiere of Manon Lescaut, Puccini met Leoncavallo in a Milan cafe. As they talked, Puccini let slip that he was working on a version of Boheme. Leoncavallo, in high dudgeon, accused Puccini of intellectual piracy, reminding him that he had already shown him his own libretto the previous year. This inelegantly public row resulted in the battle lines being drawn in the press over the next few days. Leoncavallo's publisher, Sonzogno, owner of Il Secolo, announced his client's intention of completing his Boheme, on which he had already been working for some considerable time. Puccini responded in Il Corriere della Sera with a similar announcement and a letter to the editor in which he asked: "Why is this matter of such concern to Maestro Leoncavallo? Let him compose and I shall compose, and let the public be the judge!"

After that, it was a straightforward race to the finishing line. By abandoning all other projects - a life of Buddha and an adaptation of Giovanni Verga's La Lupa - Puccini was able to breast the tape comfortably ahead of his rival by some 15 months. Ironically, although at its premiere Leoncavallo's version was a greater critical success than Puccini's and has some claim to be a more faithful adaptation of Murger's original, it can now boast only rare appearances in parts of Italy that one suspects are still malarial.

By contrast, Puccini's version, having been filtered through three such strong artistic personalities - of the two librettists, Giacosa was a distinguished poet, Illica a well-known dramatist - had moved surprisingly far from the boisterously cynical spirit of Murger's autobiographical original. And it was with Mimi, their consumptive heroine, that the trio took their greatest liberties.

Mimi is a figure derived from several characters in the original play and novel, and therefore from a succession of Murger's real-life amours. In Puccini's vision she has been considerably sanitised, lacking explicitly the opportunism and sexual readiness of her prototypes. In particular, the composer's mania for cutting ("Seek out, find, cut, rearrange, reduce" was his constant plea to his collaborators) had led to the removal of an entire act from the original conception - one that had described Mimi's life as a demi-mondaine between leaving Rodolfo after Act 2 and re-appearing to die in Act 4.

Perhaps one of the reasons she appeals so much to audiences - and therefore one of the chief reasons for the opera's enduring success - is this very enigma. So much of Mimi's story is left untold: she remains ultimately unknowable and thus ever attractive to the imagination.

n The centenary production of 'La Boheme', presented by Raymond Gubbay, is at the Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, London SW7 (booking: 0171- 589 8212) 1-4, 7-10 Feb

n 'La Boheme' is also currently in repertory at Opera North, Grand Theatre, Leeds, to 1 Feb (booking: 0113 245 9351), then on tour to Hull, Sunderland, Nottingham, Manchester