Free 100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses by Henry W. Simon

of Bastien und Bastienne is about as simple as anything can be. Bastienne is a shepherdess in love with Bastien, a shepherd. She tells us about it in two short opening arias. Then there is some bagpipe-like music, and in comes the fortuneteller Colas. In a long scene she complains of Bastien’s interest in a wealthy girl, while Colas advises her to act uninterested in Bastien’s defection and to make believe she has other admirers. When Bastien appears on the scene, the shepherdess hides while Colas tells him of Bastienne’s new interests. The shepherd, of course, really wants only his shepherdess, and in a couple of short arias Colas promises help through reading aloud from his book of magic. This is nothing but a lot of nonsense, and consists of magic words like Diggi-daggi and Schurry-murry .
    And so, when Bastien and Bastienne meet again, there is a lover’s quarrel which ends in a duet of reconciliation. Then the little opera closes with a trio in praise of the beautiful weather and the arts of the magician Colas. Nothing could be more innocent or charming.

LA BOHÈME
    (The Bohemians)
    Opera in four acts by Giacomo Puccini with
libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Giacosa and
Luigi Illica with considerable assistance from
Giulio Ricordi and the composer, based on incidents
from Henri Murger’s novel Scènes de la
vie de Bohème
MIMI , a seamstress
Soprano
RODOLFO , a poet
Tenor
MARCELLO , a painter
Baritone
COLLINE , a philosopher
Bass
SCHAUNARD , a musician
Baritone
BENOÎT , a landlord
Bass
ALCINDORO , a state councilor andfollower of Musetta
Bass
PARPIGNOL , an itinerant toy vendor
Tenor
CUSTOM-HOUSE SERGEANT
Bass
MUSETTA , a grisette
Soprano
    Time: about 1830
    Place: Paris
    First performance at Turin, February 1, 1896
        It is the evening of February 1, 1896, in the opera house at Turin. A brilliant audience has gathered to hear the world premiere of the new opera by Giacomo Puccini, whose Manon Lescaut was a nationwide success. The conductor is Arturo Toscanini, aged twenty-eight, whose repute is already such that an American critic had written, after hearing him conduct Die Götterdämmerung , that he “was the only artist the city of New York should be proud to invite to conduct.”
    Under such auspices one might have expected the premiere of the most lovable of all Italian operas to be a resounding success. It wasn’t. It wasn’t a failure, either, but the public reception was little better than lukewarm, while the critics were far from unanimous in liking it. One of them went so far as to call it “empty and downright infantile.” The Metropolitan premiere, in 1900, elicited some even worse epithets. “La Bohème,” said the Tribune , “is foul in subject and fulminant and futile in its music … Silly and inconsequential …”
    By no means all the critics were this wide of the mark. Despite the opinions of many musicians, professional critics are proved far more often right than wrong by the general opinion of posterity. But in this particular case no one was so exactly right as Puccini’s publisher, Giulio Ricordi. After working and worrying with the composer and his librettists for the entire three years that the opera was in the making, he wrote to Puccini three months before the premiere: “Dear Puccini, if this time you have not succeeded in hitting the nail squarely on the head, I will change my profession and sell salami!”
    ACT I
    The first act takes place in Paris on a Christmas Eve in the 1830’s. It is in the attic apartment of Rodolfo and Marcello, members of a quartet of happy-go-lucky, poverty-stricken Bohemians. As the scene opens, Marcello, an artist, is complaining to his friend Rodolfo, a poet, of the terrible cold. The fireplace having long been without fuel, Rodolfo gets a brilliant idea: he will use for kindling the paper on which he has written a five-act tragedy. Presently Colline, the philosopher member, enters, and warms himself at the meager grate. And lastly we