FORGET the flowers, the chocs and the heart shaped balloons. Put away the lacy lingerie and the cutesy teddy bears; pull the plug on Internet interaction and chuck your last Rolo in the bin.
With another St Valentine's Day just around the corner, what constitutes the trendiest representation of romance in the late 20th century? A 100 year old opera about a group of unemployed French teenagers, that's what. Yup, a whole century after its premiere in Turin in February 1896, Giacomo Puccini's La Boheme is still packing the punters into opera houses all over the world - and sending them home in tears.
There was a time, however, when the opera they call "the greatest weepie ever written" looked like becoming "the greatest weepie never written". In 1893 Puccini engaged in a public slanging match over the rights to the source of the story, Henri Murger's Scenez de la vie de Boheme, with his rival composer Ruggero Leoncavallo. Even when that was sorted out - to Puccini's disgust, Leoncavallo insisted on going ahead with his own version - there was a series of spectacular rows over the libretto, with the insufferably opinionated Puccini harassing his long suffering writing team of Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, demanding cuts and changes almost on a daily basis. When La Boheme was finally unveiled at the Teatro Regio in Turin in a production conducted by the 24 year old Arturo Toscanini, the audience was polite rather than enthusiastic.
Nevertheless the piece swiftly made its way on to the international opera circuit and is now one of the two or three most popular works in the repertoire, adored by people who would never otherwise darken the doors of an opera house, known even to those who never have and never will. Few phrases in opera are as familiar to the non opera going public as Rodolfo's: "Your tiny hand is frozen"; few moments in opera are as effective in their understatement as the moment when the eponymous heroine, unnoticed by any of the other characters on stage, dies without uttering a sound.
Check any opera calendar at any time of year and you'll find Bohemes dotted around with remarkable regularity; go in search of a recording, and you'll be spoiled for choice. The current centenary has, of course, prompted a rash of revivals this month, from Franco Zeffirelli's lush Vienna extravaganza to Phyllida Lloyd's motorbikes and leather jackets scenario for Opera North, but that's not the end of it - a glance at the international listings for March shows La Boheme striding confidently towards her second
SO what makes the piece such a perennial favourite? Murger's somewhat turgid story of love and death on the Left Bank doesn't seem, on the face of it, to be the stuff of frothy romantic fantasy: the central quartet of Bohemians, despite their wit and energy, are a sterile, infantile bunch who value nothing in particular, least of all the arts to which they have ostensibly dedicated their lives.
Only the composer Schaunard actually earns any money - and he earns it, thanks to the unfailingly perverse logic of opera plots, by killing a parrot. The poet, Rodolfo, hesitates for only a second before burning the play he has just completed in order to keep warm for a few miserable minutes.
Marcello ends up painting sign posts, and as for Colline the philosoper, his capacity for lateral thinking seems severely limited: four entire acts pass before it occurs to him to pawn his coat to get medical help for a dying friend. Enter Mimi: beautiful, shy, fragile yet full of fun, she epitomises the 19th century view of woman as idealised angelic being. It's Mills and Boon territory with a vengeance, yet when Mimi is portrayed as a genuine innocent, the contrast between her luminous transparency and the colourful, ironic Bohemians packs a powerful theatrical punch.
Add to that the contrast between Mimi and Rodolfo's incandescent love affair and the on off flickerings of Marcello and Musetta, the contrast between the flashy merry making in which the characters indulge themselves at the Cafe Momus and the grinding poverty of their home lives, and the fact that the four acts alternate in a sure footed way between comedy and tragedy without allowing a single tedious moment to pass and you have what has been described as the most dramatically perfect of all operas.
Dramaiic perfection, mind you, is hardly enough to inspire the kind of affection and esteem in which La Boheme is held by its many fans world wide. So is there more to it than that? You bet there is.
"Amor! Amor! Amor!" exclaim Mimi and Rodolfo as they stroll arm in arm off the stage at the end of Act One, having taken less than 15 minutes to reach what is tactfully called "the heights of tenderness" - spontaneous combustion, by operatic standards.
Never mind that it never, apparently, occurs to Rodolfo that what this girl really needs is not all consuming passion but food, central heating and a doctor; never mind that we all know a dreadful denouement is in store from the moment Mimi stumbles, coughing, on to the stage. The magic of La Boheme is that, no matter how often it's performed, no matter how kitschy the production or unappetising the singers, every time the voices of the tenor and the soprano swell and merge with those of the orchestra in that climactic Act One duet, O soave fanciulla, every single person in the audience is gripped by the insane hope that for once just this once - it will lead to happy ever after. That love at first sight will triumph over the grotty realities of everyday life. Does it ever? Ah, but it might . . .
