When Giacomo Puccini read Henri Murger’s work Les scènes de la vie de bohème in 1893, he was immediately taken with the freshness, youth, passion, cheerfulness and love with all its joys and sufferings. Puccini (1858-1924) immediately recognized the ideal material for an opera. The libretto was written by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, who had already worked successfully with the composer for Manon Lescaut.
Puccini worked out the depth of the characters in detail in his Bohème: Important moments were meticulously composed and text and music form an incomparable unity. Puccini completely attuned the themes to the action, in which lyrical-sentimental parts contrast excellently with humorous, lively parts. Since he was a genius at writing precisely for the human voice, his operas, above all "La Bohème", were a great success because of their incomparably beautiful melodies. Famous arias like "Che gelida manina" or "Sì. Mi chiamano Mimì" can also be found on opera samplers due to the intensity of the transported feelings or are a fixed component of concert evenings.
The stage-effective piece, first performed in Turin in 1896, with its impressionistic features around the poet Rodolfo and his beloved Mimì, who cannot escape poverty and misery in their Parisian attic, still brings tears of emotion to the eyes of the audience today. Puccini’s masterpiece is certainly one of the most original and magical operas ever written.

When Giacomo Puccini died in Brussels in November 1924 as a result of cancer, his composition of "Turandot" was still unfinished. The composer Franco Alfano (1876-1954) was then commissioned to complete the opera. At the premiere at the Teatro alla Scala, the work was performed as a homage to Puccini only up to Liù’s death aria. The conductor Arturo Toscanini addressed the audience at this point: "Here the opera ends, because this is where the master died".
"Turandot" can be regarded as the culmination of Puccini’s creative output, since it perfectly combines all four elements that characterize his incomparable style: The slave Liù symbolizes the lyrical-sentimental element, the pair Turandot/Kalaf the heroic, while the three courtiers stand for the comic-grotesque. The exotic element is achieved by using authentic Chinese sages and pentatonic motifs.
Compared to his other works, "Turandot" has greater echoes of contemporary musical trends, as well as dissonances, polytonal effects and, for the traditionally trained listener, irritating effects in singing and orchestration, making it - compared to his earlier operas - long less popular with the audience. In the meantime, however, Puccini’s last work has established itself on the opera stages. In it, his life’s work is bundled and gives room for speculation as to what the composer’s further musical development might have been like.