<\/p>
A<\/span>fter Manon Lescaut<\/i> had given him his first proper success in 1893, Puccini needed a new subject. He toyed with a tale about the Buddha and even went to Sicily to visit Giovanni Verga with the idea of turning that writer\u2019s short story La Lupa<\/i> into a libretto. But in the end it was Henri Murger\u2019s Sc\u00e8nes de la vie de boh\u00e8me<\/i> that whetted his appetite.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Possibly the appeal of high jinks and heartbreak among students and pretty working girls in Paris in the 1840s meant that it was no surprise Puccini<\/a> <\/strong>had a rival. Ruggero Leoncavallo, the composer of Pagliacci<\/i>, was also at work on the same subject. The two men quarrelled and Puccini declared \u2018Let him compose and I shall compose, and the public will judge.\u2019 At first Leoncavallo was deemed by the public to have won the prize, but over the century since Toscanini<\/a><\/strong> conducted the first performance in Turin in 1896 this most perfectly constructed of all operas has become the one that everyone \u2018knows\u2019. It was Mahler<\/a> <\/strong>no less who said \u2018One bar of Puccini\u2019s La boh\u00e8me<\/i> is worth the whole of Leoncavallo.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n