La bohème
1896 opera by Giacomo Puccini
La bohème ( LAH boh-EM, Italian: [la boˈɛm]) is an opera in four acts, composed by Giacomo Puccini between 1893 and 1895 to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème (1851) by Henri Murger. The story is set in Paris around 1830 and shows the Bohemian lifestyle (known in French as "la bohème") of a poor seamstress and her artist friends.
The world premiere of La bohème was on 1 February 1896 at the Teatro Regio in Turin, conducted by the 28-year-old Arturo Toscanini. Since then, La bohème has become part of the standard Italian opera repertory and is one of the most frequently performed operas worldwide.
In 1946, 50 years after the opera's premiere, Toscanini conducted a commemorative performance of it on radio with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. A recording of the performance was later released by RCA Victor on vinyl record, tape and compact disc. It is the only recording ever made of a Puccini opera by its original conductor.
Origin of the story
As credited on its title page, the libretto of La bohème is based on Henri Murger's 1851 novel, Scènes de la vie de bohème, a collection of vignettes portraying young bohemians living in Paris in the 1840s. Although often called a novel, the book has no unified plot. Like the 1849 play drawn from the book by Murger and Théodore Barrière, the opera's libretto focuses on the relationship between Rodolfo and Mimì, ending with her death.
“La bohème” enters the record as 1896 opera by Giacomo Puccini. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what bohème, opera and Giacomo can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q188621. VIAF identifies the subject as 174989059. The Library of Congress control number is n83129419. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1893, 1895, 1851 and 1830.
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This entry incorporates text from “La bohème” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.