About La bohème
in Paris during the 1830s was, in part, a reaction to the overthrow of the restrictive Bourbon monarchy and subsequent triumph of the bourgeoisie. But it was Henry Murger who was at ground zero, giving the Bohemian life its widespread appeal a decade later by way of twenty-two vignettes, first serialized in the newspaper Le Corsaire-Satan, then presented as a play (La vie bohème) and finally published as a novel (Scènes de la vie de bohème).
Murger’s tales were adapted from his personal experiences as a starving artist – early in his professional Musette was based on a life he turned his back on law and pursued a career notorious vixen of the Latin in writing. By the time he had been appointed to the Quarter, Marie-Christine Roux, provocative French newspaper in 1845, he and his a pitch-deprived chanteuse and friends had lived through most of the events detailed in the Scènes, often in appalling poverty and destitution. frequent artist’s model Bohemia was seen as a passage for any serious artist in their 20s who sought to make a name for themselves. State sponsorship had slackened, yet painters, writers and musicians still required a significant amount free time to hone their craft. Art was created for its own sake for a speculative market consisting of the bourgeois philistine rather than the royal patron. Consequently, many were reduced to near financial ruin – debt, disease and death were constantly on the horizon. The dark labyrinth of pre-Haussmann Paris afforded a variety of itinerant living opportunities. One of Murger’s group of impoverished Water Drinkers (who drank water as not to offend those who couldn’t afford wine), known only as Karol, slept in a tree; another, evicted from his lodgings, walked the streets for hours, only to drop from hunger and exhaustion; and yet another, known as le Christ, was one of many to fall victim to tuberculosis after a long bout with the illness. An acquaintance, GaspardFélix Tournachon, better known today as Nadar, was forced to walk around Paris for several days dressed as a Turk because he didn’t have sufficient funds to pay for a costume rental and redeem his street clothes. Murger himself jokes of a time when he was unable to receive a visitor because he had no trousers – he and his roommate shared a single pair. Murger’s circle is a varied group, encompassing both the famous and the forgotten, many of whom found their way into the tales. The novel’s poet, Rodolphe is, of course, the author himself. The painter Marcel is an agglomeration of two artists, Tabar and Lazare, and a work referenced in the novel (and opera), Passage of the Red Sea, is an actual epic painting Tabar was unable to complete due to lack of resources. (It was reworked into Niobe and Her Children and presented at the Salon of 1842.) Colline is another mix of two personages, the philosophers Jean Wallon and Jean Trapadoux. Wallon was known for his outer garment with enormous pockets filled with books, and Trapadoux was called “the green giant” because of his unusual height and long green topcoat. Schaunard is derived from Alexandre Schanne, first a painter, then a musician, whose musical composition The Influence of Blue in the Arts is cited in the novel, and whose episode with the poisoned parrot is relayed in the opera. Another philosopher from the Scènes, Barbemouche, didn’t quite make it into the opera, which is probably just as well since Murger didn’t much care for the two people he used for inspiration – the writers Charles Barbara and Charles Baudelaire. Of the women, Murger coupled both Schaunard and Colline, encumbrances that were later removed for Puccini’s opera. Schaunard’s belle, Phémie Teinturière has no historical counterpart, nor does the mysterious Madame Colline, who is only spoken of but never seen – she prefers to stay at home to edit her husband’s manuscripts. Musette, on the other hand, was based on a notorious vixen of the Latin Quarter, Marie-Christine Roux. A pitch-