La Bohème - San Francisco Opera

would have happened if they had really loved the piece.) Puccini, of course, thought he
had failed completely. Ten weeks later, however, in a production at Palermo, the opera
achieved outrageous success; it was "discovered" and the audience refused to leave the
house at the close of the final curtain.
The librettists of Puccini's Opera, Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, based their Mimì
almost entirely on the character of Francine, a marginal character in the novel who appears
with her lover Jacques, a painter, in only one chapter. Murger had drawn the character of
Francine in typical nineteenth century romantic form, as a fragile innocent. By basing the
Mimì of Puccini's opera on this character, Giacosa and Illica gave themselves and Puccini
the room to develop the contrast between Mimì and Musetta, and consequently between
the two pairs of lovers. This allowed for a dramatic and musical richness that might not
have been possible otherwise. The composer Claude Debussy is reported to have said
that he knew of no one who had described the Paris of the time better than Puccini.
La Bohème in San Francisco
In 1923, nine years prior to the building of the War Memorial Opera House, La bohème was
produced by San Francisco Opera. It was the first opera presented by the newly
incorporated opera company. The opera was presented at the Civic Auditorium, and was
conducted by company founder Gaetano Merola. Since then, La bohème has become San
Francisco Opera's most frequently performed work, and has been produced on the
mainstage, by the Merola Opera Program, and by many Bay Area Opera Companies.
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