La bohème is an opera in four acts by Giacomo Puccini. The Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa is based on the Henry Murger novel Scènes de la vie de Bohème.
When Puccini was composing the music for La bohème, he learned that a rival composer, Leoncavallo, was working on a similar project. Puccini declared: "Let him compose. I will compose. The audience will decide." Puccini them wrote with an urgent speed, completing his opera a year before Leoncavallo's now all but forgotten work.
La bohème was premiered in Turin on February 1, 1896 at the Teatro Regio. Though the initial response of the critics was mixed, the work quickly became popular throughout Italy and productions were soon mounted by a number of opera companies.
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