La Bohème and Puccini - The Search for a Libretto

In this talk, Ian Campbell shows how Puccini and his librettists created an opera by sifting through Henry Murger’s Scènes de la vie de Bohème, which chronicles the adventures of four Bohemians as they struggle to survive in 1840s Paris. They combined characters, changed situations, ignored less-attractive personal traits, and gave the world a beloved classic.

With musical examples showing the beauty of this opera and how Puccini even incorporated music from his student days to marvelous effect, the search for a libretto will hold more than a few surprises, even for those who know the opera well.