La Bohème

Leoncavallo, who had a keen interest in literature, recognized the dramatic potential of Murger’s witty and clever episodes and drafted a libretto, which he offered to Puccini to set to music. But Puccini declined. When Leoncavallo began setting his own text to music a year later, he learned that his rival and colleague was also working on a *La Bohème *. The fact that Puccini was the first to present his work to the public—initially with only moderate success—prevented Leoncavallo’s captivating musical tableau, which shifts sharply between humor and tragedy and emphasizes the theatricality of the depicted zest for life, from being included in the repertoire in the long term.
With his lifelike characters, strongly based on the literary source material, the composer of *Bajazzo* has succeeded in creating a distinctly more veristic portrayal of the excessive yet harsh living conditions of the Parisian artistic milieu, and thus the “unknown bohemia”reveals a touching alternative to the popular classic, one that need not shy away from comparison with its rival.