(Il. MURGER, preface to "Vie de Bohème")[1]




[Footnote 1: Rather than follow MURGER'S novel step by step, the
authors of the present libretto, both for reasons of musical and
dramatic effect, have sought to derive inspiration from the French
writer's admirable preface.

Although they have faithfully portrayed the characters, even
displaying a certain fastidiousness as to sundry local details; albeit
in the scenic development of the opera they have followed Murger's
method of dividing the libretto into four separate acts, in the
dramatic and comic episodes they have claimed that ample and entire
freedom of action, which, rightly or wrongly, they deemed necessary to
the proper scenic presentment of a novel the most free, perhaps, in
modern literature.

Yet, in this strange book, if the characters of each person therein
stand out clear and sharply defined, we often may perceive that one
and the same temperament bears different names, and that it is
incarnated, so to speak, in two different persons. Who cannot detect
in the delicate profile of one woman the personality both of Mimi and
of Francine? Who, as he reads of Mimi's "little hands, whiter than
those of the Goddess of Ease," is not reminded of Francine's little
muff?

The authors deem it their duty to point out this identity of
character. It has seemed to them that these two mirthful, fragile, and