The Music of La bohème

Certain characteristics of Puccini’s style help us to better understand what makes La bohème the masterpiece that it is. For instance, Puccini allowed himself to be more open to the concept of symphonic development as we know it from the German masters of the symphony than other Italian composers of opera, Verdi included. This means that we encounter a greater sense of the operas being ‘through-composed’, a greater sense of continuity and ‘flow’ in the music rather like one would hear in a movement of a symphony. Hence, although certain Puccini arias and ensembles can be lifted out of context and performed free-standing, there is very little sense of ‘numbers’ or isolated pieces in his operas, as we have in the works of Verdi up to Otello and Falstaff.

But Puccini used something called 'thematic reminiscence', a favorite compositional technique of Italian operatic composers wherein a melody or a melodic fragment recurs at appropriate moments in the drama in order to create an effect of irony (the 'maledizione' theme in Rigoletto), nostalgia (“Amor, amor è palpito” in La traviata) or heightened emotion (the ‘kiss’ or bacio theme in Otello), borders on the Wagnerian leitmotif because of its widespread use in all of his operas and because these melodic ideas will often recur in varied form, disguised or ‘developed’. The ‘suicide’ motive in Butterfly is a wonderful example; think, too, of the Scarpia chords in Tosca, which permeate the entire texture of the opera. There are such melodies in La bohème, particularly the themes attached to the Bohemians and to Mimì.

To call Puccini a brilliant orchestrator is perhaps an understatement: his manipulation of orchestral colors and techniques is unparalleled, certainly in the Italian repertoire. Only Verdi’s Falstaff looks forward to the brightness that Puccini seems to strive for (and gets!) in every one of his scores. This tinta or overall orchestral color is unmistakable. We notice it immediately in the short orchestral introduction to La bohème Related to the tinta is Puccini’s deft ability to write ‘atmospheric’ music, music which is able to perfectly characterize the setting of a scene and comes as close as music can to the decorator’s art. Consider the change of mood from Mimì's aria in Act I to the duet, "O soave fanciulla" where the orchestra immediately envelopes the loving couple in a wash of romanticism; or the very 'snowy', chilly atmosphere at the opening of Act III describing dawn in Paris at the Barrière d'Enfer.

One also notices after being swept away by Puccini’s melodies that the voice is often treated in a kind of parlando style, approximating speech (“spoken music”, according to the Harvard Dictionary of Music). A listener must take special notice of this throughout La bohème, where Puccini uses parlando to achieve a more ‘naturalistic’ quality to the conversations between the characters.

It has been pointed out by numerous scholars that Puccini has a penchant for the conjunct melody, a melody that moves stepwise or in small skips, something that his melodies have in common with folk music and children’s songs, making them immediately accessible to the ear as well as memorable. Likewise he is attracted, like his contemporary Tchaikovsky, to building melodic sequences on the scale. One of the most popular of his melodies from La bohème, Musetta’s waltz song “Quando me’n vo’”, is simply a very well manipulated descending E-major scale.

It has been pointed out that this is, perhaps, Puccini’s tightest score and dramatically his most cogent opera by virtue of the control he exerted over his musical material. Compared to his earlier masterpiece, Manon Lescaut, this opera is a modicum of unity in every possible way. Look at the way the four acts are structured. Unity is produced by virtue of the fact that both the first act and the fourth act open in the same location (Rodolfo’s garret), with the same two characters in mid-conversation (Rodolfo and Marcello) and with virtually the same music (the so-called ‘Bohemians’ theme; more about this later). Notice also that Acts I and IV are musically similar. Most of the themes introduced in Act I recur in Act IV, supporting the dramatic device of the two young lovers reminiscing over their first meeting as Mimì lies dying. Act II is the shortest of the four acts, introducing new musical material and two new characters (Musetta and Alcindoro). With the act’s quicker tempos it has the overall effect of a scherzo. Act III contains the heart of the opera, the tempos are somewhat slower and there is a more nostalgic, bittersweet atmosphere. Many commentators have noted that La bohème is built like a four movement symphony. This may not have been due to any conscious effort on Puccini’s part, but in fact the above stated ‘symphonic’ and cyclical structure gives the opera dramatic and musical unity (something that Leoncavallo’s effort sorely missed).

One approaches any attempt at analysis of La bohème with a certain amount of trepidation, as this is probably one of the most popular, talked about, over-analyzed operas in the standard repertoire. There isn’t much more to say about Puccini’s masterpiece that hasn’t already been said thousands of times, but great works can endure such analysis: every time we come back to this work we hear something new, something unique that we’ve not noticed before.