YMMV / La Bohème

• Adaptation Displacement: Puccini's opera is much better known than Murger's novel, and it has itself been somewhat displaced by RENT.
• Cargo Ship: Colline's only aria is a heartbreaking song of farewell... to his coat.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Colline.
• Moe: Mimi, naturally, as an adorable and shy Delicate and Sickly girl.
• Narm: The 1961 Leinsdorf recording ends with Richard Tucker (Rodolfo) blubbering so hysterically it almost sounds like he's Laughing Mad, which, as with Ewan McGregor's Inelegant Blubbering in Moulin Rouge!, potentially kills the mood.
• Tear Jerker: Puccini himself cried while finishing the scene where Mimì dies. Since then, this Downer Ending has reaped a bumper crop of tears from women and men alike.
  • The aria "Sono andanti" in the 2005 production at Orange, with Roberto Alagna as Rodolfo and Angela Gheorghiu as Mimi, is especially tear-jerking. The way Alagna punctuated his cries of "Mimi!" with sobs as he just clung onto Marcello is heartwrenching, and the way he just cradled Gheorghiu is especially moving. It helped that Alagna and Gheorghiu were married at the time, making it all the more real and painful.
  • In 1966, this opera was the last one staged at the Metropolitan Opera House on Broadway and 39th Street, soon to be razed once the company had moved to the new house at Lincoln Center. During the performance, the Colline, Jerome Hines, gave a touching tribute to the old house by changing the lyrics of "Vecchia zimarra" (Farewell, old coat) to "Vecchio teatro" (Farewell, old theater).

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