Full Score-The premiere of La Bohème took place at the Teatro Regio in Turin on 1 February 1896. Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica based their libretto for this opera on Scènes de la vie de Bohème by Henry Murger. It took Puccini only a fewmonths to complete a score brimming with wonderful melodic invention and orchestrational genius. The music is a surprisingly supple and sensitive medium for depicting a variety of emotions that animate the young: reckless living full of stop-gapexpedients erratic feelings and sudden explosions of noble sentiment the driving ambitions of one?s art. Puccini?s musical imagery illuminates the different moments and moods of the story with a delicate yet intense lyrical quality; just as therapid decline and death of Mimì subtle yet invincible remind us of the universal reality that all things must inevitably come to an end.On the cover: ?Al Quartiere Latino? sketch by Riccardo Salvadori as a variation on the sketch by Adolf Hohenstein for the world premiere in Turin of Bohème 1896 © Archivio Storico Ricordi

In Georges Bizet's Carmen--the latest volume in the Oxford Keynotes series--author Nelly Furman explores the evolution of Carmen's story and its meaning illuminating how the titular heroine has maintained her status as a universally recognizable cultural icon.