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, the 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 of the group, enters and warms himself at the meager grate. And lastly we meet the fourth member, Schaunard the musician, who has mysteriously come by the means to buy food and wine. The four are reveling and at the height of joy, when Benoit, the landlord, makes his appearance and demands some rent. He is, however, plied with wine and is soon pushed out rather roughly - and without his money. Schaunard, Marcello, and Colline thereupon depart for the Café Momus, leaving Rodolfo, who explains that he has an article to write.

A few moments later there is a timid knock at the door. It is a pretty young neighbor, whose candle has gone out. Rodolfo invites her to come in. Racked by a coughing spell, she sits down and has a sip of wine. Rodolfo relights her candle, and she leaves but returns a moment later because she seems to have dropped her key. Rodolfo gallantly searches for itl and as they grope in the darkness, the candles having gone out, Rodolfo grasps Mimi's hand. This is the signal for the beautiful aria Che gelida manina - "Thy hand is frozen", in which he tells about his way of life and his work. When he has finished, the girl answers in her equally celebrated aria, Mi chiamano Mimi - "They call me Mimi", and goes on to describe her simple life as a seamstress. Rodolfo and Mimi are now quite in love, and when they hear their friends shouting to them from below, Rodolfo ceremoniously takes Mimi's arm, and they leave to join the others at the Café Momus.

The second act takes place outside the Café Momus, where our Bohemian friends have taken a sidewalk table. A large part of the opening of this act is given over to a musical depiction of Gay Paree in the Latin Quarter on a Christmas Eve. Everyone is in a festive mood, and people are buying things they don't really want. Rodolfo introduces his new girlfriend to his friends, and presently a rich gentleman, named Alcindoro, and his gaily overdressed companion enter and occupy a table nearby. Now, the girl Alcindoro has brought in is Musetta, and Musetta is the ex-girlfriend of Marcello, the painter. She is bored to tears with her rich, elderly admirer, and tries desperately to pick up her old companion. First he will have none of her, but then she sings her famous waltz song, Quando m'en vo' soletta per la via - a frankly self-congratulatory bit - and Marcello is lost.

Suddenly Musetta screams; her shoe, she says, is pinching her - which is her device to get rid of Alcindoro for a few minutes. When he has hustled off to find another pair of shoes, she joins the Bohemians and their two girlfriends. And so, when Alcindoro returns, he finds he has lost a girl and has inherited, in her place, the enormous bill the others have run up at the café.

It is a bitter cold February morning at one of the gates of Paris. Workers demand - and finally get - admission from the police, and Puccini's excellent atmospheric music almost makes one shiver with the cold. Poor Mimi, very ill, summons Marcello from the inn where he lives with Musetta. She tells the painter piteously about her constant bickering with the jealous Rodolfo, who even now is at the tavern, having left Mimi after a quarrel. When he emerges, she hides behind a tree and overhears her lover tell Marcello how desperately ill Mimi is, and how it would be wise for them to separate. Suddenly he hears her cough and turns to her compassionately, while Marcello rushes indoors, for he hears Musetta laughing and suspects that she is again flirting with another man. In her touching aria Addio, senza rancor Mimi bids Rodolfo farewell; and in the heartbreaking duet that follows they think that in the springtime they can be together again. But the duet grows into a quartet as Marcello and Musetta bring their quarrel out of doors. The contrasting notes of the quarreling couple and the sentimental one are worked up into a marvelous ending for the act - one of the finest quartets in all of Italian opera. And before it is over, Rodolfo and Mimi have decided to remain together, while the other couple is definitely separated.

In the final act we are once more in the attic studio of Marcello and Rodolfo. The painter is trying to paint, the poet to write. But it is no use. They cannot get their minds off Musetta and Mimi, from whom they are again separated, as they sing the duet Ah, Mimi tu piů non torni. The whole atmosphere changes when their friends Colline and Schaunard turn up with a windfall of food. The four of them now act just like children; they play they are at a banquet; they dance comical dances; and two of them engage in a mock duel. But the merriment is just as suddenly stopped when Musetta enters. She has with her their old friend Mim, and Mimi, she tells them, is obviously dying. Quickly the poor girl is brought in and laid gently on the bed. As she speaks quietly to Rodolfo, saying how cold she is, the others do their best to help. Musetta tells Marcello to sell her earrings to get a cordial and the services of a doctor. Colline, in a touching little aria (Vecchia zimarra), bids farewell to his overcoat, which he goes out to sell.

At last the two lovers are left alone, and they sing sadly of their former happiness. Mimi, weakening, goes to sleep, and when the others return, Musetta prepares some medicine and breathes a quiet, intense prayer. As Rodolfo goes to hang Mimi's cloak over the window to keep out the light, Schaunard examines her more closely and notes, horror-struck, that she is already dead. At first no one dares tell Rodolfo. But he sees the expression on their faces, and with a despairing cry of "Mimi, Mimi!" he rushes across the room and flings himself down beside the body of the girl he had loved so desperately.

This article excerpted from 100 Great Operas And Their Stories by Henry W. Simon.