is limited, and there is little in his music to differentiate Manon and her lover from the ordinary hero and heroine of Italian opera.  The earlier scenes of the opera demand a lighter touch than he could then command, but in the tragic scene at Havre he is completely successful.  Here he strikes the true note of tragedy.  The great concerted piece with which the act ends is a masterly piece of writing, and proves that Puccini can handle a form, which as employed by lesser men is a synonym for stereotyped conventionality, with superb passion and sincerity.

But Puccini’s earlier successes sank into insignificance by the side of the triumph of ‘La Boheme,’ which was produced in 1896.  It was impossible to weave a connected story from Murger’s famous novel.  Puccini’s librettists attempted nothing of the kind.  They took four scenes each complete in itself and put them before the audience without any pretence of a connecting thread of interest.  In the first act we see the joyous quartet of Bohemians in their Paris attic—­Rodolphe the poet, Marcel the painter, Colline the philosopher, and Schaunard the musician.  Rodolphe sacrifices the manuscript of his tragedy to keep the fire going, and Marcel keeps the landlord at bay, until the arrival of Schaunard with an unexpected windfall of provisions raises the spirits of the company to the zenith of rapture.  Three of the Bohemians go out to keep Christmas Eve at their favourite cafe, leaving Rodolphe to finish an article.  To him enters Mimi, an embroiderer, who lodges on the same floor, under pretence of asking for a light.  A delicious love-duet follows, and the lovers go off to join their friends.  The next scene is at the Cafe Momus, where Musette appears with a wealthy banker.  She speedily contrives to get the banker out of the way and rushes into the arms of her old lover, Marcel.  This scene, which is very short, is a carnival of bustle and gaiety, and is a brilliant example of Puccini’s happy knack of handling concerted music.  The next scene is a series of quarrels and reconciliations between the two pairs of lovers, while in the last act Mimi, who has deserted Rodolphe, comes back to see him once more before she dies, and breathes her last on the little bed in the attic.  Puccini’s music echoes the spirit of Murger’s romance with marvellous sincerity.  It paints the mingled joy and grief of Bohemian life in hues the most delicate and tender.  Like Murger, though dealing with things often squalid and unlovely, he never forgets that he is an artist.  The sordid facts of life are gilded by the rainbow colours of romance.  Puccini has caught the fanciful grace of Murger’s style with the dexterity of genius.  His music is thoroughly Italian in style, but he never strikes a false note.  He dashes off the irresponsible gaiety of the earlier scenes with a touch which though light is always sure, and when the action deepens to tenderness, and even to pathos, he can be serious without falling into sentimentality and impressive without encroaching upon the boundaries of melodrama.  ‘La Boheme’ is one of the few operas of recent years which can be described as a masterpiece.