![]() ![]() The friends do what they can but it is too late to save her. They are interrupted when Musetta bursts in to say that Mimì is dying. Schaunard and Colline bring some meagre food and the four friends pretend that they are enjoying a fine dinner party with dancing. ![]() Marcello and Rodolfo are alone again, trying to work, though their thoughts stray to their absent lovers. Marcello and Musetta quarrel while Rodolfo and Mimì confront the necessity of separation. She overhears the men talking about her: Rodolfo believes she is so ill that her only chance of recovery is to leave him and his life of poverty. Mimì asks Marcello to speak to Rodolfo for her because his jealousy has made their life together impossible. On a cold February dawn, people enter the district looking for work. As a military tattoo passes by, Musetta instructs the Bohemians to add their bill to hers: Alcindoro can settle them both. Finally, she despatches Alcindoro to buy her a pair of shoes and throws herself into Marcello’s arms. She offers Calaf one last chance to withdraw, but he stands firm. Turandot devised this system to avenge her ancestress, Lo-u Ling, who was captured, raped, and put to death by marauding invaders. Marcello loses his temper when his old flame, Musetta, walks by with Alcindoro, her companion his upper-class impatience drives her to make an outrageous scene. A crowd assembles for the Trial of the Three Enigmas. Outside Café Momus, last-minute Christmas shopping is in progress. From the street below, Rodolfo’s friends call out for him to hurry up he promises to join them with Mimì. Rodolfo revives her and helps her to look for the key she has dropped in the darkness, their hands touch. It is Mimì, a neighbour, who is so weak that she faints. They manage to avoid paying and set off, leaving Rodolfo behind to finish an article. Just as they are about to leave, the landlord arrives with a demand for rent. He proposes that they celebrate at the Café Momus. Their friends arrive: Colline, despondent that he has failed to sell any books, and Schaunard, triumphant with money and food and wine. Marcello, a painter, is trying to create a monotype in the extreme cold of a studio he shares with Rodolfo, a writer Rodolfo volunteers to warm them both up by burning the manuscript of his play. The action is set in Paris during the early 1930s. ![]()
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