Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème overwhelms its audience time and again with its emotional sincerity. The story of the love between the sickly Mimì and the unsuccessful poet Rodolfo is so immediately moving, not least because Puccini and his librettists dispense with any ideological superstructure that might create distance: Two young people who fall in and out of love with each other is a deeply familiar plot line for all audiences. But the far too early death of Mimì gives this everyday event a tragic dimension of depth, which Puccini expresses so poignantly in his score that the existential significance of this story, as simple as it is sad, becomes tangible in all its directness.
